Tuesday, October 16, 2007

the woes of the sippy cups

Well, Lydia knows very well how NOT to drink from a sippy cup. So far we just have Gerber ones, both soft spout and hard spout, but these are so spill-proof that you also have to actually suck pretty hard on them to get any liquid out at all. Nothing will come out if you chew or bite even the soft spout (which is all she does... no sucking on it at all). I hesitate to get some of the sippy cups that have a spout that's a little more forgiving of an imperfect suck, b/c I don't want her to get into the habit of biting to make fluid come out and then get a "normal" sippy cup and think it's broken or empty b/c nothing comes out when she bites it. I've tried a straw but that only works for sips at a time, and only when I hold my finger over it and let a little dribble out from the bottom. I've even tried just a cup by itself, and she either helps me tip it back way too far and too fast and gets too much and chokes on it, doesn't get any at all, or gets just the right amount but lets it dribble out of her mouth. I keep asking around and babies way younger than Lydia have mastered even the hard-spout sippy cups, and then I feel bad that I didn't introduce it to her sooner, and I wonder if she'll ever "get" it. Surely she will eventually. I mean, she won't stay a baby forever, right? I won't have to pack some bottles to send her off to college with, right?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stephen is just now getting the hang of sippy cups, and he's 14 months old :D Up until now he insisted on having his bottle! Do other kids really learn to use the sippy cup younger than Lydia? Wow, that surprised me!

Margaret said...

I second that. Caroline still isn't into drinking from a sippy cup either. We use the Nuby kind. She did figure out this month how to tip it back. But half of her drink ends up in her bib pocket - what would I do without the bib pocket!!

Plus, she pretty much rejects bottles too.

Anonymous said...

Hey Andrea! Ryan "got" the sippies, but couldn't lift them high enough to get anything, so I switched him to a straw cup...she'll get it eventually!

Anonymous said...

She will get there. When I first tried Darcy found it hard tipping the cup. So I left it a while. Then I started using handles regularly on his bottles. I use Avent bottles and cups (do you have them there? They are British) & the handles fit over the top of the cup/bottle then u put the lid on and they stay put. Anyway - so then once he was regularly feeding himself his bottle (woohoo!) I started putting hte handles on the cup. Tipping it up is no issue at all now. Then with the actual sucking etc. The tip is soft on the Avent cups but they have a vent that you can leave on so the cup is nonspill/you have to suck harder to get drink out, OR you can take it off. It makes a bit of a mess, but I found that if I took it off , he realised how to use the cup, then I put the vent/filter thing back on it, so that he just had to suck a bit harder to get the drink out. It also then makes less mess. I found that Darcy got the cup sipping before he got the straw thing but i guess it just all come down to practice! Hope this helps!!!