Rethinking the Bottle

At Little Lady's last doctors appointment, her pediatrician told both Ja and I that Sahara needed about 16-18 ounces of milk each day. And, at that time she was probably getting about 14-15 ounces. So, we thought, we'll just incorporate another bottle in during lunch or dinner instead of water. And, then we read the '12 month' handout that our doctor gave us. (We get a new handout each time according to her age. Each handout gives an idea of what your baby should be doing and what she will start to be able to do in the next month or so.) On this particular handout, it said that by a year old, your baby should no longer be using a bottle, but only sippy cups. This we were guilty of. Sahara loved her bottles, would get excited for them, and gulp them down like nothing. I was not looking forward to making the switch to sippy cups because of this. But, a few weeks later, I cut her off, cold turkey. Mean, huh?

You know, I don't even see the reason why she can't have them. The kid is a year old. She can't really talk yet, looses her balance still just walking, doesn't understand a ton, and is still in diapers. What is so bad about bottles, anyways? And, I don't get the huge difference between the sippy cups and bottles either. Now a days, most sippys look like bottles. We have two that look just like bottle nipples. (I bought these thinking it would be an easier way to switch from bottles to sippys...apparently, they are not the same.)

Sahara would drink out the sippy cups, (she had always had water from the cups, but milk was given in a bottle), but she would only drink an ounce or two of milk. We tried for several weeks to see if she was just getting used to no longer having milk in a bottle. But, to no avail. Two ounces a day was all that she was drinking.

Last night, I finally told Ja that she just wasn't drinking that much milk anymore. We then looked at each other, and it seemed that a light when on. Why do we care what the stupid handout says? She is our kid! And, what's so bad about giving our baby, yes, she still is one, a bottle? It's not going to kill her. I don't put her to bed with it, so it's not decaying her teeth. So, what is the big deal? Isn't she going to grow up fast enough? Why must we act like she is so much older than she really is?

We decided to see if she would drink more milk if from a bottle. If she did, we figured it was better to worry about how much milk she was getting, than from what it was coming out of. And, if she still didn't drink that much, then we would revert back to the sippy cups and find a new method of getting her to drink her milk. So, I gave her a bottle. She gulped down 5 ounces in about 8 minutes.

Yes, we are going to continue to use bottles. Will this make it a bit harder to break the habit down the road? Perhaps. Am I going to worry about that now? No.

My little girl is only little once, why rush it? Who is it going to hurt in the end? No one. And, what if she is going to need braces when she is older, because of using a bottle for a little while longer than she was supposed to? Fact is, she will of most likely needed braces anyways.

This is what her daddy wears sometimes when he goes shooting. She loves to wear them around the house. "Dignity has nothing to do with it" ~ Syd the Sloth, from Ice Age Yes, that is a ton of drool. That's how we roll.

She had a bit of a hard week, that week. Spun around too many times, fell and gave herself a bloody lip. Tripped on a stair and scraped up her forehead and nose, and bumped into a toy at the church nursery and got a goose egg on her forehead.