Bottlefeeding

hi ladies,

i'm reaching out for help on a couple of boards. i generally frequent the preg and parenting after IVF board, but i'm starting to get desparate for ideas!!

my son will be one next week!! i really want to get him weaned from the bottle and eating table foods, but it's been a battle. i've been trying to give him straw and sippy cups, and we have good days and bad days. generally, he won't drink very much from either, and will only take his milk (formula until we run out) from a bottle. he's a very lazy drinker, and never has really been one to hold his own bottle. he doesn't seem to get the whole lifting the bottle/cup and tipping his head concept... motor issue? i don't know.

in terms of food, he loves anything pureed, be it stage 2 foods, yogurt, or applesauce. he eats his baby cereal with flavor mixed in - generally the gerber banana oatmeal or earth's best mixed grains with some stage 2 fruit or applesauce mixed in. he is starting to do some of the stage 3s. he usually spits out the first few bites, and then gets on a role, chewing the chunks for the most part. finger or table foods are the biggest issue. he's finally starting to imitate putting a cheerio, puff, or yogurt melt in his mouth, but usually as soon as it hits his mouth, he makes a face, flinches, and spits it out. same thing with basically ANY table food...

i'm an early intervention service coordinator, so unfortunately/fortunately i know too much about a lot of things, but also have access to a lot of great resources. i'm debated a speech and/or OT eval for noah. i can't decide if a) he's just a picky kid, b) he has oral motor issues, or c) it's a sensory thing.

any feedback or suggestions would be great!! TIA!

Hi and welcome to the board! :)

I think that every kid is different personally and I would let him decide when he's ready and one day he certainly will be. At 1 my DD was by no means eating table food. We were doing the whole puree thing and she HATED to self feed. The only thing that was good was that she loved her sippy so transitioning from bottle to sippy was a breeze for me. I really thought at one point she would never feed herself. She loved flinging the food on the floor which resulted in me having to feed her. She will be 2 in Nov and I'm happy to announce she eats all of our foods, and she feeds HERSELF! :) Let him do his own thing, always offer different things, offer the sippie, and one day you'll see, it'll happen. :)

Jen, CL, Bottlefeeding board