Sippy Cup Standoff Update

Two months ago I wrote a blog where I made some goals and stated that I could not slink back into the pediatrician’s office at Emma’s fifteen month well check up and confess to having failed at meeting those goals.  Well, on Monday, I had to do just that.  My goals were to have Emma drinking from and holding her own sippy cup and drinking milk instead of formula.  At her fifteen month appointment I had to report that no, Emma is not drinking from a cup.  And yes, Emma is still on formula.  While I was at it I went ahead and informed them that not only is she still drinking a bottle but she won’t even hold it herself.  All my cards were on the table, and it was clear that I’d been bluffing.

The pediatrician okayed my plan to take the bottles away cold turkey.  He assured me that she would not be harmed or become dehydrated by this action.  So today I ended the standoff by taking offensive action.  Emma awoke to a home that had been cleared of bottles and all their paraphernalia.  I offered a sippy cup full of chocolate milk (the doctor’s suggestion to help get her not only drinking from a sippy, but drinking real milk) and Emma stubbornly pressed her lips together and shook her head.  She wouldn’t even have a taste. 

This continued throughout the day.  I kept offering her a sippy cup and she kept refusing to allow it past her lips.  By early afternoon I could tell that she was beginning to get frustrated.  I felt awful because I knew she was thirsty, but I would not give in.  And then, at just before 3 in the afternoon, a miracle happened.  I offered Emma a drink, just like I’d been doing all day, but this time she sat down and opened her mouth.  We are using a straw cup because I didn’t think Emma would understand that she had to tip a regular sippy cup back to get a drink since she has no experience doing this with bottles.  I put the straw in her mouth and she drank.  I was so relieved!  But then, something even more momentous happened.  I sat the cup down in front of her and she picked it up all by herself and continued drinking.  I was so thrilled I could have cried.  My baby was drinking from a cup on her own!

Emma spent the rest of the afternoon carrying her cup around and drinking from it like she’d been doing it all her life.  At first she was drinking juice, but at dinner time I offered her chocolate milk again.  She took a drink and proclaimed, “Mmm!” with a smile on her face.  So now I’m off the hook with buying toddler formula, too.  The pediatrician’s plan is to slowly start substituting chocolate milk with regular milk over the next couple of weeks until she’s drinking all regular milk.  I am so happy to have a plan in place that seems to be working.

Once I took action the standoff ended after only seven hours.  I’d been prepared for a much more difficult road.  I’m impressed with how quickly Emma realized that the bottles were gone and I am so proud of her for finally being a big girl and drinking from a cup.  I’m also proud of me for finally putting my foot down on this issue and not allowing Emma to make all the rules.  Maybe there’s hope for me after all.  I’d been thinking of this as my summer project, but here I am on the second official day of summer break with the project completed.  There’s nothing like being efficient.  Now I’ve got seven and a half more weeks to fill…

Sippy Cup Standoff

Though I do not prefer it, I can certainly admit if I’ve been wrong.  Ideally, I avoid being wrong in the first place.  But I’m not perfect.  So this blog is to admit that, when it comes to parenting Emmalee, I am doing it wrong.  Perhaps I’m not doing it all wrong.  Something, though, just isn’t working the way it should.  Something is not clicking.  I am running into obstacles that I don’t know how to overcome.  Maybe I should explain.

Yesterday Emmalee officially became 13 months old.  This caused me to panic in a way that Emmalee’s 12 month milestone didn’t quite affect me.  At her last well check up, I was informed by the doctor that Emma should be done with bottles and on whole milk by fifteen months.  But that was three full months away.  I still had plenty of time to deal with my obstinate child.  Yesterday, though, marked the passage of an entire month.  It hit me hard because it seems as though the month has passed without me really noticing it at all.  Didn’t we just have Emma’s party?  Where did the time go?

And now I have only two months to come up with some sort of plan and implement it.  My first goal: to get Emma to hold her own bottle.  My second goal: to get Emma to drink from a sippy cup.  And my third, least important, goal: to get Emma to drink whole milk.  These might not sound like complicated projects.  For me, though, they feel like epic battles that I must win.  I am in a war, the enemy being my darling child.  I must conquer her, for both our sakes; I must figure out a way to be the victor in “The Sippy Cup Standoff.”

I just don’t know how to begin.  I am not a war strategist.  I am not even a very experienced mom.  For all my bravado and confident talk, I honestly don’t have a clue what I’m doing.  To others, it might not sound like such a big deal.  If you want her to hold her own bottle, just stop holding it for her, you might be thinking.  But you are not the one who would then have to face her anger, her tears, her uncomprehending disappointment as she stares up at me with her heartbroken, hazel eyes, choking on her food because her own mother won’t help her to get a drink.  How could I be so cruel? 

I know I am being dramatic.  Maybe I’m in denial about where Emma gets that from.  I am unsure why it is that I am able to make Emmalee “cry it out” alone in her crib at night but all attempts at tough love fly out the window once dawn breaks.  Maybe it is because in the night I don’t have to face her.  I can stay on the other side of the wall, pretending that I’m sure about what I’m doing, without having to see the anguish in her eyes.  But during the day, with my inadequacies lit brightly by the sun, I just don’t have the heart to make Emma suffer.  I baby her and coddle her in ways I never would have imagined myself being capable of prior to her existence.  I think it is safe to say that I am in serious trouble.

With my deadline looming just over the horizon, my anxiety over the issue is skyrocketing.  I just can’t slink back into the pediatrician’s office in June and have to face Emma’s doctor with news of my utter failure at being a mother.  Even Babycenter.com doesn’t seem to have the answer on this one.  I have read their article.  I have tried the Do’s and avoided the Don’ts, but with no luck.  All I seem to have is more questions.  Is it important to first make Emma hold her own bottle?  Maybe I should just remove all the bottles, stick a sippy cup in front of her and insist that she make both changes at once?  But what if the suddenness of that approach traumatizes her?  What if she gets dehydrated?  What if I cause her to develop issues with food?  With trust?  With control?  What if I damage her somehow for the rest of her life because of making the wrong decision now?  There is entirely too much pressure in parenting. 

Maybe the answer is just to relax.  Maybe I’m making it too big of a deal.  I kind of have the feeling that, if given enough time, I will emerge victoriously from this standoff.  After all, I doubt she’ll want to pack a bottle in her lunch box on the first day of school.  But it is hard to ignore both the doctor’s advice and the looks I get from people out in public.  It would be nice if other people would just mind their own business and keep their hostile judgments off their faces… but then, to be fair, it probably does look like I’m holding up a bottle for a two year old since Emma is such a big girl.  And how much time am I willing to give her?  What if she is two and still won’t budge on the issue?  I just don’t see myself being able to relax anytime soon.

So the standoff continues.  I will report back when there is more to share.

Got Milk?

Becoming a new mom can be overwhelming, particularly if you are concerned with being a very good mom.  If you have this concern, you will likely spend a great deal of your prenatal time reading books and “Google-ing,” as I did.  What will then happen to you is this: you will have an overload of contradicting information and your brain will explode.  Okay, maybe not explode.  But you will no longer remember what you believe and you will spend countless middle of the night hours wondering what parts of the information you’ve acquired are important and what parts should be discarded.  What can you do to lower the risk of SIDS?  Should you co-sleep?  Should you use a bassinet or put the baby in the crib right away?  Should you wear your baby?  (This is a real thing, look it up.)  Should you use cloth or disposable diapers?  Is it okay that you don’t want to breastfeed?  What kind of bottles/pacifiers/diapers/wipes/etc are best?  As your baby gets older you’ll wonder, should I make homemade baby food or use store bought?  What’s organic and why do I care?  Is my baby getting enough formula?  Will I ever sleep a full night again?  Is cry it out the answer?  How much baby proofing is truly necessary?

Clearly, there is a lot to consider.  But a recent thread on Babycenter.com’s message boards really threw me for a loop.  On this thread there were mothers who claimed that it was harmful to give your child milk.  Yes, that’s right, milk.  They weren’t arguing about coffee, or poison, or vodka.  They were arguing about milk.  According to these women, milk is a dangerous and harmful substance that should be avoided at all costs.  It is full of antibiotics (aren’t those good?) and hormones and has been linked to frequent ear infections and even certain types of cancer.  These same women also believe that formula “more than doubles” the chance of infant death. 

Really?  As if there aren’t enough things to terrify mothers these days, now we have to fear milk?  What happened to milk being full of calcium and Vitamin D?  The good ‘ole days when milk-mustached celebrities wanted to know if we had any?  Preventing osteoporosis?  None of that rings a bell? 

Generations of human beings have been raised on milk, and most of us turned out to be relatively okay.  I say enough.  We cannot raise our children ruled by fear of giving them cancer.  Is this really the message we want to send to the newest generation; that everything we encounter is tainted and should be treated with trepidation?  Yes, there are germs.  Yes, there are things that cause cancer.  No, the world is not a perfect place.  But if we let fear rule our lives we will be missing out on the chance to live.  I’m not saying throw caution to the wind in every circumstance.  I’m just saying that as parents we need to take a deep breath and relax before our children end up in psychiatric offices getting prescriptions for Xanax because they are so fearful of the world that they can no longer function.  The anxieties over doing what is best for our children have to stop somewhere.  I vote that they stop with milk.

                                             (Yes, we're doing editorial shots now.)