How to replace bottles with snack + cup of milk?

[viccat]

I know it seems obvious right?!

I have a mental hurdle about not giving my little boy his mid-morning and mid-afternoon bottles of milk (formula, although was breastfed until 9 months old).

He is just over a year old now, and we've started with cows milk in his porridge, but I'm not sure what to do instead of the milk at snack time. He isn't drinking too happily, even when we have tried milk in the cup. (He can drink from a sippy cup, he just doesn't want to most of the time!).

What do I give him with the milk that is different to his lunch and dinner? Those are a cooked meat/veg meal and a finger food cheese/avocado/bread/tomatoes type meals plus fruity pudding.

He also gets a bedtime bottle, which I want to keep. It does mean he is getting 600ml of formula a day, plus the milk in the porridge. That's why I think I need to figure out how to transition to less milk!

Please help! I'm going nuts overthinking this!

 

[MindUtopia]

What we did was to offer a snack first (oatcakes, breadsticks - Tesco does these multipacks of mini unsalted breadsticks that are a perfect toddler snack, yogurt, fruit, cheese cubes, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.) around the time of the usual bottle of milk, offering as much as she wanted. Then if she still seemed hungry, I'd offer her a small bottle.

I wouldn't necessarily be in a hurry to both introduce a snack and switch to using a cup if you don't want to be. It's sort of two separate skills/changes, and we actually approached them at separate times. You can change both together if you feel you should, but I think it's fine to start with offering a snack and top up with milk in a bottle still if you feel it's needed.

But anyway, basically, just offer a snack to start at the usual time you would offer milk and just see how he goes. You may find he doesn't even seem hungry after and then you can skip the milk altogether if the snack alone tides him over to the next meal.

I also don't think you have to overthink the types of things you offer as a snack. They are very similar to what I tend to offer as a cold 'side' or 'dessert' for lunch and dinner...so breadsticks, oatcakes, crackers, cheese cubes, cucumber sticks, baby tomatoes, banana, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, yogurt. I tend to not offer those same things again at the next meal if we've just had them for a snack, but I'd still offer something similar. Like yesterday, for mid-morning snack, we had blueberries and grapes, for lunch we had a sandwich with baby tomatoes and a yogurt, and then for afternoon snack, oatcakes and more blueberries.

For us, once we got in the habit of having a snack (the also offering a small milk top up after if needed), the bottle at that time just dropped on its own. We then made the switch to using cups instead of bottles maybe a month or two later. As for the actual amount of milk, toddlers should have about 500 ml a day, so he's pretty much right on track for that anyway, I don't think you really need to stress about reducing it.

 

[viccat]

Thanks - that is helping set my mind at ease!

Today we went out to the garden centre, and I didn't take anything as there is a good cafe there. He did fine with grapes, a smoothie and some bits of our scone