How to give water to a 6 month old

Hi...was wondering how to give water to my 6 month old baby...actually she will be 7mth in 10 days....at the moment she get water with a spoon at the time of her 10 am solids....should i make her drink from a sippy cup..another thing does one give water thru out the day or only at the time of her solid feed.


any advice is welcome..

When do you first start giving water to babies? And does it start with spoons initially?

If you are breastfeeding, the baby CAN live on just breastmilk for a year. But water after 6 months works fine.


Spoon works, but nipple is easier at 6 months. At 8-9 months, try a sippy cup.

I breast feed (no bottles at all)

We give our baby water in two ways:


1. those cheap plastic ikea cups - just for practice, a bit messy, but at about 6-7 months they get a bit and lap it like a cat!


2. we got cheap plastic cups with a straw from the basement of WingOn, our baby (now 9 months) has been using these since 7 months or so... and now picks it up off the ground and uses it herself.

Or use the no spill cups from Euguene Club called Nubby


Breast fed babies don't actually need the water, and our son never drank much his first year, our daughter likes it a lot more but maybe because now we live in Beijing where it is soooo dry.


In short:

If you don't use bottles - don't introduce one just for water!

A few spoons of water after the meal is fine.

it does not matter if they don't drink much, it takes time for them to learn and often the 'blow bubbles' with the straw before they drink haha


eventually your goal between now and 12 months is to get your daughter to drink whole fat milk from a cup with a straw, not a bottle, so see water in a cup with a straw as practice for that!


Our son loves his cup with a straw and can drink form a normal cup as well, he never had a bottle.


Even if your baby does have bottles, at one year you should cut out the bottle and go to a cup with a straw. It takes about a week of having a thirsty baby before they realise if they want to drink, they need to use the cup. So any early practice with water has lots of other benefits too :)


Hope that helps

Very good answer crj