Fewer Bottles then Formula to Milk Transition

Not gonna lie, I was not looking forward to these transitions. But I knew I had to do it and the longer I waited, the worse it would be.

Fewer Bottles
I think around 9-10 months we reduced the number of bottles a day from four to three.  Her Doc had told us to keep a total of three a day because eventually those three bottles would transition for her to have milk with all three meals.  And she was right because we are to that point now!  More to come on that.  

The way we reduced from four bottles to three is this:
Molly Anne was getting bottles at wake up, 11:30, 3:30 and bedtime.  All we did was one day we decided to replace that 3:30pm bottle with a snack after she got up from her nap.  The 11:30 bottle we gave to her before we fed her lunch so we were sure she was getting proper nutrition.  Now, she just gets milk with her lunch (and every meal).  I'll explain more on that later.  But Doc was right - I'm glad we did it exactly the way we did.

Formula to Milk:

At 11 months we could move from formula to milk.  I decided to wait until after our Florida trip because I didn't want to chance any extra chaos from already sleeping in a hotel room together for the first time.  I also didn't want to deal with having to bring organic whole milk and taking it out to meals etc.  

So I waited for normal conditions and when we got home, we went cold turkey to organic whole milk.  In her usual bottles (didn't want to change milk and bottles at the same time).  She knew it tasted differently but after a day or two, she drank enough ounces that she was back to her 21 ish ounces per day. Ms. Becky told me to set the milk out for 15-20 minutes before I gave it to her so it'd get closer to room temperature.  That helped a lot because she was used to getting room temperature bottles.  I'm terrible but she has never had a warm bottle in her life.  Again, they only know what they know.  And MA doesn't know what a warm bottle tastes like. Somehow she has survived! ;)

So that transition happened pretty easily.  I took the last box of formula I bought from target back.  I only had bought it in case we had to mix formula and milk to get her used to milk but I didn't. It felt so good taking it back and saying, "we are finished with formula!!!" 

Next up - the bottle to sippy cup transition.  We are pretty much still in the midst of this.  She's finished...she hasn't seen a bottle since last Friday night but we are still working through our new schedule.  And I'm still working on cooling it with making sure she gets the exact number of ounces per day haha!