Am I giving too many bottles to my 11 month olds?

My boys turn 11 months tomorrow (time flies!) And was curious if I may be over doing the bottle. They have been on cow's milk for a month (started at 10 months) and they are doing well and love it. However, I feel like perhaps they shouldn't be needing as much. They take 4 a day. One in the morning, twice in the day for naps, and one before bed. I've been trying to use the sippy as well once a day with juice or water. Is it normal to have this many bottles? My husband watches them for a week every 4 days or so, so he is playing Mr Mom a lot and does a great job! :good: But was thinking maybe we should cut out one of those bottles in the day and give more snacks in between meals?

 

I think mine were right around a year old when we dropped down to 3 bottles a day, and 3 meals a day. Morning bottle, breakfast, lunch, afternoon bottle, supper, nighttime bottle. They'll need to shift their intake over to food more than bottles soon. Mine were about 13-14 months old when we dropped the afternoon bottle and gave a snack instead, and then 15-16 months when we dropped the morning bottle, and then nighttime bottle was last around 16 months.

 

Around 11 months is when we started the process of replacing bottles with sippy cups of milk. First we dropped from 4 bottles to 3 bottles and a mid-afternoon snack. Then I replaced each of the bottles with a sippy of milk at each meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner). I think you could definitely start the process now and see how your kids take to it. Mine didn't even seem to notice and they had their last bottle on their 1st birthday. I was THRILLED to be done with bottles!! (and that is putting it mildly....lol)

 

Now ladies I have a question how did you work naps into that schedule? Was it two a day still at 12 mo? We are approaching 11 mo in a week and are at 4 bottles/sippies and 3 naps! And Ejaceac, we have the same schedule you did at this point any advice? To dropping a milk (bottle/sippy) they are good about sippies during the day but not that last feeding but I figure we have a month to work on that. Did you ladies do 1/2 milk then taper out the formula? But I also can't wait to be done with bottles... but still a little sad!

 

We didn't switch to one nap until 14 months. At 11 months, they took a short morning nap around 9:30 and an afternoon nap around 2pm. We were also transitioning to towards three meals a day at "normal" mealtimes with sippies of milk rather than bottles (8am breakfast, 11:30am lunch, snack at 3:30ih, 5:30pm dinner).

We did the change to milk VERY slowly because they previously had problems with milk and we wanted to be sure they could tolerate it. I literally swapped out one ounce of milk at a time. I think you could maybe start off with 1/4th milk and the rest formula, do that for a few days and go to 1/2 milk, then 3/4 milk, then all milk, as long as your kids are okay with dairy.