Our Dr has told us to start the babies on sippy cups. I bought them all one to try and so far it's a no go. The one I bought is from Evenflo and is short and the sides are kind of wavy (best I can describe) The top has a band of a contrasting color around the are where they sip from. They don't seem to like these at all. I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas for different ones they may like more. I think if they had ones that were a little softer to sip from they would be more likely to try them. Hunter and Kaitlyn have tried them, but Hailey just totally refuses and just screams when you give it to her. Any advice or ideas would be great.

Beth
mom to
Britney 4-29-91
Lindsey 3-7-94
Hailey, Hunter and Kaitlyn 27weeks 6days 4-25-03
http://lilypie.com>

We like the Gerber ones and I used the coupons they sent us to get them for free. Have you sent your birth certificates to all the places that will send you free stuff? My ds still doesn't really like drinking from it, but he loves to chew on the spout so I hope he'll get the idea soon.

Anna -- Mama to
Kelsey, Brooke, and Drew
born 1/23/03 at 36 wks

We had so many different sippy cups I knew we would get it down sooner or later. They started with Advent soft tops then finally settled with Ansa. They have a hole in the middle so it's easy to hold, same with their ex-bottles. We started them with a little apple juice at 6 months. Pedi said don't dilute it, so we didn't. We just had to limit their intake. We left them laying around all over the floor since they were rolling/crawling they usually came up on one. We had Gerber but the white thingies inside kept breaking so we returned them & they sent us coupons for $5.00 off anything of theirs. Now they are using Munchkin 9oz Straw Sippies. They get a bedtime bottle but as of 1/1/04 no more BA-BAs!!! YEA!

Tiffani & Ray(NJ)

I'm going back a few years here but I do remember the dilemma when my boys started on sippy cups. Many of the cups have the no-spill spouts. At the beginning, these were much harder for little ones to use. They not only ahd to get the hand of the cups but also had to suck hard to get any fluids.

I switched to little Tupperware cups with the sippy lids.There was no restriction on the lid, just a slit for the liquid to pour out. No sucking really needed. At first, I gave only water since the kids would shake them and the water would spill. But the quickly got the hang of using the cups. After they mastered the easy cups, I moved onto the harder cups that had the no-spill tops. It worked great for my boys!

Best wishes,

Sharon
6 year old b/b/b + 10 year old son

We never used sippy cups, only the straw cups from playtex. My girls used the playtex bottles which do not require them to tip them up to use so they never understood the concept of sippy cups. All the research I did on straw cups say it is recommended to use them by speech therapists-not sure why-something about the sucking. Also it is great to teach them how to use them if you don't have a sippy and you are out and about. Mine can be over my moms house and use a regular plastic cup with a straw and get by. Now they are trying to drink out of a cup and doing very well...

Jennifer, SAHM to ggg

I brought the sippies out at 6 months. Just left them on the floor for the kids to play around with. Filled them with water & ice. Eventually they picked on up what they were for. I would give them one in the car to play with while driving. At nine months all my girls drank from them at snack time. By 12 months they took one at each meal (we gave them a night bottle until 15 months). I used the regular ole plaxtex sippies. They're easy to use, clean and interchange with the thremos version. You can upgrade styles as they get older. It was a very easy transition from the bottle.

Lisa
mom to: Abbey, Cassie, Zoe
10/19/01 @ 32 weeks
dh- David
see our babies: http://
www.daveleland.com

Lisa
mom to: Abbey, Cassie, Zoe
10/19/01 @ 32 weeks
dh- David
see our babies: http://
www.daveleland.com

I think I may be in the minority here, but my dds were strictly on the bottle until they turned a year old. The day after their birthday, we eliminated the bottle altogether and switched over to cups with no problem transitioning. I just didn't see the point of starting my girls on sippy cups before they were ready. If your kiddos don't seem ready to use the sippy cup, don't worry. Try again in a month or two. Good luck! -- Gloria

Mom to five girls: ages 12, 10, and 9/9/9

This is what our Dr. recommended. He said that alot of parents are proud that their child is off of bottles and onto sippy cups, but that often the babies will fall off of their growth curve as a result of it. He said that we can expose them to sippy cups if we want to, but that at this point (our babies are 10 months), the goal is to get formula in them, not teach them how to use sippy cupts. He said to worry about sippy cups after their first birthday. I don't know if he has different advise for parents of singletons, but he said, drumroll here..."we have our hands full" (funny, I NEVER hear that from anyone!) and that there was no reason to add another hassle to our day. I feel the same way!

Melinda
mom of Annabelle, Lillian and Charlotte, 2/25/03
35 weeks, 6 days

Hi Gloria. We are one week away from the first birthday (wow - time flies) and we have tried sippy cups a handful of times without much luck. Do you really just get rid of the bottles entirely? Mine have been on half formula and half EBM since birth, so I'm already stressing about getting them used to whole milk and I didn't know if I should do the milk/sippy cup introduction all at one time or not. Thanks for any advice you might have

Susan
b/g/b born 1/7/03 at 34w6d

Susan
b/g/b born 1/7/03

Hi Susan,

This is how I did it with all of my 5 dds, and it really was a very easy transition for all of them. If I remember correctly, I think I introduced whole milk a couple of weeks before they turned one (in their bottles) just so they could get used to the taste. Also, I never gave my girls "bedtime" bottles. They always finished their last bottle at least 1/2 hour-1 hour before they went to bed, so changing to sippy cups didn't disrupt their sleeping routine.

If you don't think your trio's ready yet when they turn one, don't stress over it. Going cold turkey worked for me and my dds, but you and your kids may be different. Good luck and Happy Birthday to your trio!

Gloria

Mom to five girls: ages 12, 10, and 9/9/9

i think exposing them to sippies is a great idea at this early age but actually expecting them to DRINK out of them successfully (or even be interested in them) is fairly unrealistic in my opinion. i always laid a few out for the kids to play with and literally, until they were about 13 months old when bottles were things of the past the things were just just shaken and thrown and used as weapons! i used to get frustrated, but now i realize they just weren't ready yet. so, don't be too hard on yourself or stress out if they don't drink from them or even act remotely interested in them. just give them time, and remember that each will figure the crazy things out in their own time. good luck!

Meg

i found sippy cups to be like soothers...little ones are particular about them! i know the evenflo ones of which you speak, my son didn't go for them either.

what i recommend is that you ask mother's with slightly older children to "lend" you a sippy cup and let your kids try it out. my son loved the gerber sippy cup, but we had to try several before he decided he liked that one. if your babies are older than eight months, you might even recommend a "sport bottle" type that has a straw. those are a hit among my son and his friends.

but don't spend money on trial and error if you can temporarily borrow from friends first!!!

tess
mummy to 7yr old ds & the triumverate born 2004

Well, as someone else said, I may be in the minority, however my babies are 13 mos old, and still on bottles almost exclusively. I use Platex bottles (with the bags) and, again, like someone else said, they don't have to really tip them to use, so the sippies (when I have tried them) frustrate them. I hold it for them after meals so they start to get the clue "Oh, I can suck and get fluid from this, just like my bottle". I think they will use a cup when ready, no need to push it. On the other hand, I have taught them to drink form the side of a cup since like 6 mos.

The sippies I use are Advent (7oz), with white, soft top. The idea is it is softer like a nipple, unlike some sippy cups with hard plastic spouts, so hopefully they will accept it more readily. I also bought the 9oz size, but the spouts are harder. I don't plan to run out and but any more. I think they will figure out in their own time.

My 2 cents is that your babies are too young to even think about sippies, but that is only my opinion. Almost 28 weekers in April makes them only like 5+ mos. (mine were 28 weekers, too:) But your DR thinks otherwise, so I guess I would start slowly, maybe leave them around to "try" at first.

Good luck and happy sipping!

Kara
BGG(11/23/02)

Kara~
BGG 4yrs 11-23-02
""

I would NOT recommend the ones with the handles on both sides. I thought they'd be easiest, so I started with those, only to find out that if the lid was on all the way, the handles weren't lined up on the sides correctly, so you had to hold it funny. Maybe that's just the few I got, I don't know 'cause I didn't buy any more to find out!

We like the Gerber ones with the little white inserts in the lids. I didn't have a problem with the white inserts needing to be replaced; but I have found that the lids sometimes crack where they hold the inserts. Can't buy replacement lids, so I had to replace the whole cup. But the lids do work on both the big & small cups, so that was handy.

When we also heard that speech therapists recommend moving on to straw cups after a while, we gave some of those a try, but the kids still prefer the sippy cups so we alternate. I like the straw cups I got, they're the walmart brand & they don't leak & they work whether you tip the cup up or not, which is handy 'cause the kids didn't understand about tipping the cup up for sippy cups & not doing so for straw cups. However, I'm not totally thrilled with these straw cups because each cup has 5 pieces (cup, lid, and 3-piece straw assembly) so when one stops working (which we found to happen after a month or two), you have to be a detective to figure out which piece or combination of pieces is causing the problem. Might be due to being washed in the dishwasher daily.

However, the real reason I'm writing this long-winded reply is because I just discovered a new (I think it's new) type of sippy cup in Walmart & we really like them. Wish I'd known about them years ago. First of all, they're cheap (half the price of the others, or better), the lid is only 1 piece (it has nipple-type material in the spout & lid), it doesn't leak, it stacks so I can get 6 of these to fit in the same amount of cabinet space that 1 of the straw cups takes up, and best of all, the lids snap on so there are no threads going around the top so you can use the cups without the lids as the kids learn to drink out of "real" cups.

Have fun shopping! Bottom line, I guess, is that you shouldn't buy a ton of any cup until you figure out if you really like it!

Carol

This is what we did: at 6 months we started having sippys with water in them at dinner (they'd eat dinner before us and then sit with us when we ate dinner). We use the gerber cups with the handles and they love them. It took a long time for them to get the concept but they just had it each dinner. At 10 months we took the third bottle away and replaced it with 4 oz of formula with lunch and 4 oz at dinner, all of it in sippys. I give it to them while I prepare the solids. Now at 12 months they'll easily chug 4-6 oz with each meal and we're switching to milk.

Our next step will be to switch to "the first years" sippys, my older son uses those and I really like them because they have no valve and yet do not spill.

AnneLena - SAHM
^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^
Christian 17
Savannah 12
Jacob 3
and surviving sextuplets born at 32.2 wks Dec 02:
Noah 4# 4oz
Dylan 4# 3oz
Amalie 4# 2oz
^angel d^
^angel e^
^angel f^
^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^-.,.-^

AnneLena - SAHM
·.¸><((((º>.·´¯'..¸.·´¯'..¸><((((º>.·´¯'..¸.·´¯'..¸><((((º>.·´
Christian 19
Savannah 13
Jacob 4 1/2
and surviving sextuplets born at 32.2 wks Dec 02:
Noah 4# 4oz
Dylan 4# 3oz
Amalie 4# 2oz
Sweet Angels ^d^ ^e^ ^f^ We'll love you f

Thanks everyone for all the great input. I never even thought to factor in their adjusted age at all. I guess I am just going to play with a couple different kinds, including the straw type, and go from there. I figure that one day they will get it and start drinking from them.

Beth
mom to
Britney 4-29-91
Lindsey 3-7-94
Hailey, Hunter and Kaitlyn 27weeks 6days 4-25-03
http://lilypie.com>

We have tried every sippy cup made and the only one mine like are the Gerber with the soft tips. The white valves can be a pain but at least they like them.

Allison
Tatum, Caroline & Abby
31 weeks

We tried just about every brand out there. We settled on Playtex. Still don't do well with Gerber. Take n Toss pop open when they get tossed and land on the floor. Since they toss a lot, we don't do those. Wefound that it was easier for them to learn with shorter cups rather than taller ones until they get hang of tipping. Also, the ones with handles for holding really jsut made it easier for them to heave it further across the room. The throwing lessened when they got cups w/out handles.

We went cold turkey to get off bottles when the babies were 12 months corrected age. I didn't have a problem with my DS at the same age, but quads were a bit more difficult. We did it over Labor Day weekend so DH could share the love. It took a good week before all were doing well with sippies. We did continue to give a bed time bottle for that week b/c I was concerned that they all weren't getting enough fluid. One thing that helped was taking out the valves and helping them. Once they got the idea of sucking and tipping, the valves went back in. Also we would sign and say "drink" and make a big deal out of it, saying it in a high-pitched fun voice. A couple of them took to it well with that method. I had one straggler, but they get the idea if the bottles stay out of view and if you stick to it.

The trick is that you have to persevere. I had to tell myself that this was it. My other attempts ended in my pouring the milk back into the bottle.

One ohter thing that worked for my DS but not for my quads was to only put milk in the sippy and only formula in the bottle. He loved milk from the get go so he transitioned off formula and bottle at the same time. This didn't work for my quads. Probably b/c I was more impatient and wanted to get them off formula due to the cost.

MonsterMom6
10 year old ^b^ b twins @ 30w5d (1 survivor) and
8 year old gggg quads @ 32w0d