Don't let the sippy cup fool you.

I pride myself in saying that I've very evidence-based when it comes to most things in life.  It probably comes from my job, as a pharmacist.  Either way, I don't generally buy things unless I know the products have received favorable reviews somewhere.  For baby items, generally that somewhere is Amazon.

So here's my beef with the sippy cup that we have.  I got this two-pack of sippy cups (the Playtex Sipster) from a friend who purchased off my baby registry.  BTW, I found out later after being a "real" mom that a lot of things I put on my registry were...uh...sort of dumb.  I stood behind this registry item though.  Why?  Because it got pretty damn good reviews on Amazon.

So what's the problem?

AJ's been dinking around this thing, clueless about how to use this, since 5 months.  He doesn't have the skills to sip out of it yet.  He knows where the spout is.  He just bites it.  He can chew on the handles and the bottom of it. He's drank probably a grand total of 3 sips since the day we introduced this thing, about 2 months ago.

Puzzled, I polled my FB mom's group and asked them how they got their babies to drink from a sippy cup, and what techniques did they use? My friends with older babies responded back that NONE of their babies had yet to master the sippy cup (the oldest baby just turned one).  Overwhelmingly, the moms recommended trying with a cup-and-straw type of sippy cup first. Drinking out of a straw, apparently is much easier.

To me, this is totally crazy, since this product is marketed towards infants! 4-12 months, to be exact according to the box.  See the upper right hand corner.

So there you have it.  Don't let the sippy cup fool you.  It's not really for babies.  Toddlers, maybe.  Babies? No.