With a lack of professional recommendations and no shortage of popular opinions, the bottle-feeding cut-off has yet to be established in the medical community, but a recent study from doctors at St. Michael's Hospital and The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has found that nine months is prime time to give the bottle the boot.
The reason, researchers say, is that the older a baby gets, the harder it is to get them to give up the bottle. By two years old, bottle-feeding could have already introduced a variety of long-lasting health problems into the baby's life.
"We know that children who are using the bottle beyond two years of age are at a higher risk of iron deficiency, at risk of school problems and behavioural issues, and in rare cases, stroke. We know that children who are using the bottle in a prolonged-fashion are at a high risk of (being) overweight, and obesity. We know that they are at a higher risk of dental problems, like cavities,"said Dr. Jonathon Maguire, the study's author and a pediatrician at St. Michael's.
"So you put all of these factors together, you say, 'Wow, the risks really mount as the child gets older.' So clearly there comes a point in time when using a bottle is not good for you."
Maguire said bottles are easy to get attached to and often contain milk and juice that pack on the calories in place of other nutritious foods.
The study, published in the current issue of Pediatrics magazine, used two control groups of 100 babies each to look at the way family doctors and pediatricians can inform parents about weaning babies off their bottles.
The first group of parents was given a five-minute "intervention" at nine months, which included information about how to wean a baby off a bottle. The second group was offered nutritional, but not bottle-weaning, advice.
The study found the babies in the intervention group were less than half as likely to be using the bottle at age 2.
After a two-year period, about 15 per cent of the babies whose parents were given the weaning advice were still on the bottle, compared with 40 per cent in the other group.
American guidelines recommend parents wean their babies off bottles by 15 months, but many parents do not know this, said Maguire. Some continue feeding their children with bottles until they are three or four years old, he said.
He added that nine months is a good time to wean babies off the bottle because they are able to do it within the span of a week before they are too attached.
Weaning involves removing the baby's bottle from one meal at a time and avoiding putting it in the bed. Parents should replace bottles with "sippy cups" or cups, said Maguire.
