Dawn Winkelmann (1s):

Parents want their kids to swallow safely and avoid excessive, gagging and choking, and being able to help support that normal development. So, you know, drinking from a cup and drinking from a straw, and again, skipping all of these types of sippy cups.

Katie Ferraro (16s):

Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mama of seven specializing in baby led weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of the Baby-Led weaning made easy podcast. I'm your host, Katie Ferraro. And today I'm so excited to bring you one of my favorite guests. She's a dear friend and a fellow feeding expert colleague, Ms.

Katie Ferraro (57s):

Dawn Winkelman. She's a speech language pathologist, and she knows a lot about cups. All right. And Dawn is going to talk to us today, given us six reasons why we want to skip the sippy cup now to some of you, this might be news. You're like, what is wrong with the sippy cup? Well, Dawn has a very eloquent way of telling you six reasons why you not only don't need a sippy cup, but it actually might be dangerous. So I'm going to let her do that. But before I bring her on, I want to tell you guys a quick story, because I didn't know that sippy cups were not necessary and totally skippable. I thought the natural progression when I was starting solids with my oldest, Molly was do breastfeeding or bottle feeding then to a sippy cup. Then someday they'll learn how to drink out of an open cup.

Katie Ferraro (1m 37s):

When I started baby led weaning with my quadruplets, who are my next set of babies. I met Dawn and we were doing some work together and she kind of opened my eyes to this whole idea of like, you can go right from the bottle or breast to the open cup. And in fact, you should. Now at that point, we had tried some sippy cups for a little bit. So I kind of did like a half sippy cup, half open cup thing and was like, Hmm, I don't know about this whole immediate going from the breast or the bottle to the open cup. So I was like on the fence about it. But then when I had my sixth and seventh babies who are twins, Gus and Hannah, full-blown doing baby led weaning as a profession and then also doing it with my own babiethat was the first time I was able to do direct from the bottle.

Katie Ferraro (2m 17s):

I was exclusively pumping. So they were drinking breast milk and formula out of a bottle and then went right to the open cup. We totally skipped the sippy cup and I was blown away by how well the babies did learning to drink out of an open cup with literally just five minutes of practice after each meal. And I didn't even get around to starting with them until they were about eight months of age. So by the time they turned one, they hit that feeding milestone of being able to drink out of an open cup with minimal spillage. I have Dawn to thank for it. And also her tiny cup, which he's going to explain to you what that baby led weaning cup is in this episode. But I wanted to say that I never recommend a feeding practice or theory or technique. If I myself, hadn't had success with it, either in my own family or with the families I work with.

Katie Ferraro (3m 2s):

And you guys, your baby can definitely go from the breast or bottle direct to the open cup. You don't need to do a sippy cup. And Dawn is here to give you six great reasons why you want to skip the sippy cup. So with no further ado here she is. Miss Dawn Winkelman talking about six reasons to skip the sippy cup. All right, well hello, Dawn. And welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have you here to pick your brain all about why we should be skipping the sippy cup.

Dawn Winkelmann (3m 29s):

Thank you so much for having me, Katie. It's so great to be here.

Katie Ferraro (3m 32s):

All right. So now I, the way I kind of frame today's episode is like, I know we have endless questions about why sippy cups are not desirable for children. What I usually tell parents is, you know, sippy cups were invented by parents to prevent spills. You're going to talk a little bit about why children from a developmental standpoint don't need them. Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. All right. So let's go ahead and dive right. In six reasons to skip the sippy cup. You wanna go ahead and start with number one?

Dawn Winkelmann (3m 59s):

Yes, yes, yes. So the first reason why I teach parents to avoid the sippy cup completely is that it's not developmental. And what I mean by that is that it's not necessary for babies to actually have a sippy because there is no developmental benefit. In fact, we're going to talk more about how it can actually cause some developmental delays, but there are two types of feeding and swallowing milestones that have to do with drinking. The first one is an open cut milestone. By six months of age, babies should learn how to drink from an open cup, held by an adult. And then around nine to 12 months of age, they should start to learn to drink from a straw.

Dawn Winkelmann (4m 40s):

And those are developmental milestones that help foster good feeding and swallowing development and sippy cups don't have any place in that because there are no feeding milestones for sippy cups, sippy cups, like you said, they stopped spills, but you know what else? That stops spills, encouraging your little ones to make their fine motor and swelling milestones. So they actually learn how to drink and they don't spill. I tell parents all the time, like if your baby or your child is falling off of a bike, then what you do is you teach them how to ride a bike. If your baby is spilling, then you just teach your baby how to be able to have those skills in order to not.

Katie Ferraro (5m 18s):

I always use your analogy of the, what about grandma and the Porsche. Could you do that one? Like when are sippy cups appropriate?

Dawn Winkelmann (5m 24s):

So I tell parents that, you know, if you have a sippy cup and you need it for like an occasional use, that would be something like your grandma just got a new Porsche or a new Jaguar, and they want you to go on a road trip with them. Yes. Obviously bringing a sippy cup, it's an occasional thing. You don't want your child spilling in the car. But what I always see is that these babies are using these sippy cups. They're holding them all day long. They're constantly drinking off of them and they really prevent them being able to actually reach their milestones. And when I talk about cups, I'm talking about spouted, sippy cups, as well as spoutless sippy cups, like the 360 cups, because those cause movements of the lips and jaw to actually perform abnormally, which means these are movements that do not support the developmental movements of feeding.

Katie Ferraro (6m 15s):

And I cannot agree more like I know every single parent listening is like, if you bought one of those 360 cups, you're like, how does this work? Like I remember before I knew about the importance of transitioning, right from the bottle of breast open cup, I out those cups for my quadruplets. And I was like, how do these work? Like I had to try it out myself. And it's like not a natural mechanism to push down with the top of your lip and suck through the bottom of your teeth. I mean, if you, as an adult who know how to drink out of an open cup, have to use a totally different skillset to figure that out. It just seems like you're interfering with the baby's ability to learn how to drink out of the open cup, which is the point, right?

Dawn Winkelmann (6m 49s):

Exactly.We really want to foster adequate feeding and swallowing skills that actually will help produce the ability to be able to swallow safely. I mean, when it all comes down to it, parents want their kids to swallow safely and avoid excessive gagging and choking, and being able to use these developmental milestones that are there for parents to be able to help support that normal development that is, you know, drinking from a cup and drinking from a straw. And again, skipping all of these, you know, types of sippy cups.

Katie Ferraro (7m 20s):

All right. So reason number one is because it's not developmental. And in case you guys miss that one thing I was confused about too, is that Dawn says that the milestone for open cup drinking comes before that of straw cups. So she said open cup, starting at around six months, introduce a straw later between nine and 12 months of a I would agree that that's probably the opposite of what a lot of parents think. Do you find that as well in your practice.

Dawn Winkelmann (7m 41s):

Yes, absolutely. I'll get parents that will call me and want to come in and do a feeding evaluation for their baby because you know, they're six months of age and they're not able to drink from a straw. And I say, oh, that doesn't even come. Like, I'm not worried about that until the child is 12 months of age, we see some nine month olds that are able to drink from a straw. And even some six month olds can drink from a straw, but basically we need this to be a developmental process, right. We want babies to actually work on lip closure with open cup and then work on lip rounding with a straw cup and developmentally lip closure comes first and then lip rounding. And so it's really important to be able to practice these skills for babies, not only for their feeding and drinking, but also for their speech and language,so they don't have delays, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.

Katie Ferraro (8m 30s):

Okay. So for reason, number one, it's not developmental. Don what's reason number two, why we should skip the sippy cup?

Dawn Winkelmann (8m 35s):

So I consistently tell parents that a sippy cup may delay tongue development for feeding. And when I talk about that, I talk about how a tongue is actually moving in baby's mouth before six months of age. So a baby's tongue is going in and out. So it's going back and forth and being able kind of suckle the breast milk or the formula. And so, but at six months of age, we're wanting that tongue to actually go up to the roof of the mouth to be able to swallow safely. In fact, one of the signs of baby led, we need to make sure that baby is ready is that we have that decrease of tongue thrust. So that tongue thrust is actually inside of the mouth and going up to the roof of the mouth in order to swallow food safely.

Dawn Winkelmann (9m 19s):

That's one of the reasons why I say to families skip the sippy because the sippy will actually promote that tongue to be at resr at the front of the mouth, which is where we don't want the tongue. When we're starting to introduce solids, the quote that keeps being put in social media is what I always say. Skippy's sabotage solids. And so if we're using a sippy, then you're having that tongue coming out of the mouth, which we don't want that tongue thrusts. And it can actually sabotage, you know, starting solids and being able to have baby be successful. And we want to do baby led weaning to actually help our babies feed and help our babies and make these developmental movements in their mouth. And, you know, sippy cup can actually cause some feeding delays.

Katie Ferraro (9m 59s):

So I'm not a speech language pathologist. And I got to get some clarification here. We want the tongue to go up to the roof of the mouth, but are you saying then that sucking on the sippy cup impairs that tongue's ability to reach the roof of the mouth?

Dawn Winkelmann (10m 10s):

Yeah, because basically the tongue is constantly forward doing that immature swallow pattern that backwards and forwards there's suckling using the sippy cup. The tongue is actually more at rest in the front of the mouth. Instead of being able to practice it's the tongue is a muscle. So we need to practice these muscle movements in order to make swallowing safe. So if they're drinking from a sippy cup and their tongue is outside of their mouth or more, or what we call in speech therapy, the tongue is at rest in the mouth instead of actually pumping up to the roof of their mouth and being able to really get that, what we call tongue elevation up to the roof of the mouth in order to swallow safely.

Dawn Winkelmann (10m 51s):

They're not practicing that skill. If everyone could just swallow your saliva and feel your tongue go up to the roof of your mouth. So everyone would just do that. That's what we want babies to do. But what babies have, if they're drinking from a sippy cup, that tongue is at the beginning of the mouth. So let your tongue relax and kind of move towards the front of your mouth and just kind of relax. That's where the tongue is when we're sucking from a sippy. So those movements need to be exercise. That tongue movement needs to be exercised, not only for feeding, but for drinking as well as for speech.

Katie Ferraro (11m 25s):

All right. So first of all, we don't do sippy cups because they're not developmental. Secondly, they cause feeding delays. What's the third reason to skip the sippy cup?

Dawn Winkelmann (11m 33s):

Yeah, they can cause speech and language delays. So we're talking about the tongue of this whole time, right? So when we are drinking from an open cup, we are working on lip closure. When we're drinking from a straw, we're working on lip rounding. When we're drinking from a sippy, that tongue is not being utilized in a mature fashion. We're keeping it an immature state. So feeding milestones, pre-seed speech milestones. We have to make our feeding milestones first and foremost, before babies can actually develop speech. And then before they develop language, so the open cup actually promotes good speech development. We have that good lip closurethe tongue is actually moving up to the roof of their mouth.

Dawn Winkelmann (12m 17s):

So they're getting all of these really great tongue strengthening and lip strengthening exercises, which actually will help promote good speech and language development. When the tongue doesn't practice these elevation movements, then it rests in the front of the mouth. And again has more of what we call an open mouth posture, which can delay speech and language.

Katie Ferraro (12m 37s):

And I love that you mentioned this speech delays because you think, gosh, it's feeding. Why do we care about speech? Like you have to remember these things are all interrelated and I'm not saying, you know, that speech and feeding are related. But I think a lot of parents, myself included like you're focusing on feeding, but you have to remember feeding doesn't occur in a bubble, right? Your baby is teething. At the same time, there's going to be there changes in the rate of their growth and their development. They're moving, they're crawling. They're going to start pulling up during the weaning period. They're also going to start developing language and that the milestones that we can help them achieve for feeding actually set the groundwork to help the babies meet these speech milestones as well. It's fascinating because we sometimes get such tunnel vision. I think like it's feeding time. No, it's not feeding proceeds speech milestones.

Katie Ferraro (13m 18s):

So thank you for that reminder. All right, what's up next? Why should we skip the sippy

Dawn Winkelmann (13m 21s):

Cup? Another thing in the most scariest part for me as a speech and feeding therapist, I specialize in swallowing. And when I see babies be exposed to a sippy cup, it really places them at risk for aspiration. What aspiration is, is food a liquids or saliva going into the lungs or the airway instead of going into the stomach and why that places him at risk is that if you're drinking from a sippy cup, then you are learning to drink with your head tilted back in order to get the liquids from the bottom of a sippy cup, children have to tilt their head back. So if everybody just listening to the podcast, just do that with me for a second, tilt your head back.

Dawn Winkelmann (14m 1s):

That is a position that you do when you just get done running, you get done running, and you're like, you're tilting your head back to actually open up your airway, really open and engage your lungs and take a deep breath. That's the position that babies will drink out of when they're drinking from a spoutless or a spouted sippy cup. So they're tilting their head back and because they have a valve in them, it can really help them swallow. So parents are like, well, my child isn't choking when they're doing that. They're not choking, but they're getting in that habit of that position. And then when we offer a straw cup or an open cup, they open up their airway and put their heads in that position, which can really confuse them about where they need to place their neck and head in order to swallow safely.

Dawn Winkelmann (14m 50s):

And so that liquid can into the lungs, you know, a strong baby can actually cough that out and be completely fine, but it can actually trigger them to not want to drink. And so I really don't like the positioning that it puts our babies in, and then they practice that over and over. And as we know with feeding, the more that you practice a certain skill, that's the position that you end up placing yourself in. So I don't like it because it puts babies at risk for aspiration and keeps them in an unsafe position.

Katie Ferraro (15m 21s):

And another thing that I would add along the same lines of aspiration is that the portability aspect of the sippy cup parents think, okay, it's kind of carte blanche to let the baby run around and start drinking when they're on the move. And so parents like, well, it's not going to spill so now they can be walking around with it or drink it in the car. And now we're entering situations that dramatically increase the risk of choking because children should never be walking around or running or drinking in the back of a car, eating food on observed. If there is a choking incident, it may happen outside of the high chair. So it's a good reminder that we should always be feeding and offering drinks out of the open cup. Only when the child is seated safely in the highchair and being observed by the adults, because the second you let them run around again, that risk goes through the roof.

Dawn Winkelmann (16m 4s):

Absolutely. You know, having a sippy cup, just doesn't place a baby in that safe position. And you're right. I think that when they have a sippy cup where you don't observe them as much.

Katie Ferraro (16m 15s):

Yeah. And I appreciate that, you know, you've mentioned there are not only not developmentally required, they may cause feeding delays or speech delays, but thank you for pointing out that they could actually be dangerous, which is a nice segue into the next reason why we want to skip the sippy cup and what's that done?

Dawn Winkelmann (16m 29s):

Yeah. It can impair dentition. And I have a collection of these nod, sippy cup tops that I actually take with me to some of...

Katie Ferraro (16m 39s):

She really does. She has chewed on sippy cup, plastic tops that she will show you that at first I thought they were fake. I was like, no, somebody just dropped this in the garbage disposal and you're showing me this.

Dawn Winkelmann (16m 51s):

No, no they're real. So when I do a feeding evaluation with a family, I, you know, encourage them to show me all of their feeding gear. And so when I see these, you know, Tufts of sippy cups, I'm like, okay, number one, we're, you're in feeding therapy with me. And the first thing we're going to do is get your child off of this. Give me that for my collection. The second thing I need this, I need to show this to other parents. So I have this huge collection and, and it doesn't matter the brand or, you know, the type, they basically all look the same. They're having plastic that is either been gnawed off by, you know, their one baby tooth or their actual indentions in the plastic from their tongue, really rubbing against that plastic.

Dawn Winkelmann (17m 33s):

And actually in denting the sippy cup.

Katie Ferraro (17m 35s):

Talk about plastic, if you don't mind, because we're not supposed to be using plastic and feeding.

Dawn Winkelmann (17m 39s):

Right. Right. You know, medical professionals say that, you know, we want to decrease the use of plastic. We want to increase the ability babies to actually drink out of normal quote-unquote containers that we drink out of. We drink more out of, you know, silicone for our water bottles or metal or glass. However, metal in glass actually can cause damage to baby's teeth as well. Again, these children are learning how to drink. So they're bringing, you know, a metal or a glass container up to they're very, very sensitive gum line or new teeth as these babies are teething.

Dawn Winkelmann (18m 20s):

And so that can be very unsafe. So if I can segue into, I designed a cup called the tiny cup for ezpz and it is a 100% food grade, silicone cup. And so it's an open cup. That's going to actually help promote good speech development, help with feeding development and swallowing development. And again, it is a developmental milestone. We want a open cup to be offered to a baby early and often. And the first feeding milestone starts at six months of age being introduced to an open cup, held by an adult. And the important thing about the silicone is that, you know, it's soft.

Dawn Winkelmann (19m 2s):

So if a baby is learning how to drink and holding on to that cup and bringing it up rather quickly to their mouth, those development teeth in those very, very soft and tender gums, won't get damaged by the flexibility and the smooth rim of the silicone cup, which is one of the reasons why I designed that in addition being a medically trained speech pathologist, I've worked in the hospital settings and I've actually suctioned out plastic slivers from babies throats that have not off these sippy cups and then explaining to parents, you know, literally here's plastic from your baby's throat and your baby seven months old.

Katie Ferraro (19m 39s):

And it is hard though. Like I would remember when my youngest, Gus and Hannah were starting solids, it was just about the time that the tiny cup you had developed it. And they were one of the first babies, remember to try it out. And that was so fun to like, have you help them learn how to drink out of an open cup and to teach me how to do it. And we had been talking about plastic previous to that because the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends minimizing the additives in our babies, food and feeding gear and plastic being one of them. And it looked around my kitchen. I'm like, but all the feeding stuff that's available for sale is plastic. And you're like, that's exactly why I'm developing a hundred percent food grade silicone cups. So the cup that she's mentioning you guys, the tiny cup, it's an ideal cup for baby led weaning. You guys have a great graphic from ezpz that shows all of the features of it.

Katie Ferraro (20m 23s):

And it's a two ounce cup, which is very appropriate for babies and it's a hundred percent silicone, so it's not plastic, but it has a lot of other features. So thoughtfully designed, which so much of the baby feeding gear out there is not, you know, not appropriate. The portion sizes are too big, or we can talk all about some of the limitations of other products, but I like to focus on the positives of the tiny cup. And it really has been revolutionary in the field of feeding in it's only been on the market for a little bit over a year, but I just love watching other people practice with that tiny cup and the baby gets so proficient at it so quickly. So it was great timing because then Gus and Hannah, we transitioned directly from the bottle. It was pumping exclusively for them. They were drinking breast milk out of a bottle.

Katie Ferraro (21m 4s):

And I was able to go from the bottle directly to the open cup with no sippy cups in between. And that was the first time I had done that. I'm with my older five kids, I always just thought, oh, I need a sippy cup. And it's a practice that I now recommend, but I would never be able to recommend it if I hadn't done it myself. And it's amazing to see how quickly babies can pick up drinking from that open cup by themselves, starting at six months of age, you just need about five minutes of practice after each meal.

Dawn Winkelmann (21m 30s):

Yes and it's so important to do that because it's really going to help their dentition. You know, we want babies to actually learn how to safely drink from something safe and something that is not too heavy and something that is not going to damage their teeth. In addition to, you know, having glass or plastic or a metal, you know, slamming up into their dentition. It's also important to know that from a dental standpoint, sippy cups actually increase the risk of dental cavities.

Katie Ferraro (22m 0s):

Yes. From a nutrition standpoint, if you think about what they're putting in there, right? If there's milk or juice, or even watered down juice in there, that presence of the carbohydrate, the sugar, it sits in it, Bades the baby's teeth in that, which is the perfect environment for then bacteria and pathogens that could cause decay in the baby's teeth. So having the constant access to the carbohydrate is completely unnecessary from a nutrition standpoint and can be harmful from a dentition standpoint. So all the more reason to skip the sippy cup, which takes us to our last reason, Dawn what's number six?

Dawn Winkelmann (22m 32s):

Yes. Is portion size. Most sippy cups on the market are 10 to 15 ounces. And the tiny cup, I designed it to be a two ounce portion, which is more developmentally appropriate. We want to work on the development of purposeful swallowing rather than unsafe or unobserved guzzling. We want to allow babies to actually learn how to be able to swallow safely and be able to give themselves the cup and be independent with this because the next developmental milestone is at 12 months of age, babies should be able to drink from an open cup independently with some spillage, of course, but they need to be independent.

Dawn Winkelmann (23m 12s):

So like you were saying earlier, practicing five minutes a day with a correct portion size, like one, one and a half ounces as compared to these 10 to 15 ounces, to be able to actually learn how to hold a cup and be able to drink successfully is so important. And again, developmentally appropriate.

Katie Ferraro (23m 31s):

And I love that you're pointing out the milestones that are coming forward. It's nice, sometimes we worry so much about how old our baby is right now and what they should be doing. Well, let's just look a few months ahead at the goal because at 12 months of age, your baby, doesn't just magically wake up and know how to drink independently out of an open cup with minimal spillage. And you mentioned the one-year milestone. Well, at the one year mark, we transitioned baby from breast milk or formula to cows milk. And the guideline there is we want the babies to be drinking at one year, somewhere between 16 to 24 ounces of milk. Well, I have a sister-in-law who, when her daughter turned one and they went for the one year checkup, it was actually at her 18 month, a one and a half year. The doctor was a little concerned because her weight had ticked up on the growth chart. She said, gosh, you know, she seems to be gaining weight more quickly than she had previously.

Katie Ferraro (24m 13s):

And my sister-in-law was concerned. You know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm feeding all the right foods and she's not eating too much. And we don't do snacks. And as we're kind of going through and breaking down the foods that her daughter was eating at that age, I was observing her daughter playing in the living room with a 12 ounce sippy cup full of whole milk. Now whole milk is appropriate for the baby. And my sister-in-law told me, I could tell this story by the way. So I'm not calling her out because she said, I didn't know. And I said, well, there's nothing wrong with 12 ounces, but how many times a day do you fill that sippy cup up? And she said, I don't know. I just let her have milk whenever she asks for it. So there was a babysitter giving her some milk. The dad was giving her a big thing of milk. The mom would give her a big thing of milk, and then she'd get a big thing of milk before bed. She was drinking between 36 and 48 ounces of whole milk a day.

Katie Ferraro (24m 56s):

And then of course not surprisingly not hungry at mealtime. So the mom was like, she doesn't eat that much. And she's drinking milk, which has healthy, yes, a small amount of milk or 16 to 24 ounces. You know, all, all good things in moderation, right. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. And it was contributing excessive calories that was causing her to have unnecessary weight gain and also causing her not to eat the foods. And then another problem with that is that there's no iron in milk. So now the baby is filling up on calories, which yes, there's nutrition in milk, but it's displacing other iron rich foods. So we recommended cutting the milk back to no more than one and a half of those sizes. And then moving, you know, spreading it out with a smaller portion like your cup. It, it really promotes more adequate portion size cause parents just think, well, if it's 12 ounces, I'll fill it up a few times a day.

Katie Ferraro (25m 40s):

And it could be leading to all sorts of problems, which Dawn reminds me that you have another cup for parents to switch to in the baby turns 12 months. Could you talk about that?

Dawn Winkelmann (25m 50s):

So the tiny cup is age range for six to 12 months. So these are infants, right? So this is again to help them make that six month old milestone. And again, that 12 month old milestone, and once babies are able to drink from the tiny cup independently, then they can move on to the mini cup. So the mini cup is designed for 12 to 24 months of age. And the real reason that I wanted to have two different cups. And again, this is very unique in the feeding space is that the mouth movements and the mouth size of an infant as compared to a young toddler are very different.

Dawn Winkelmann (26m 31s):

So we want a cup for infants that actually fit the mouth that allows babies to be able to still breathe through their nose, allows babies to actually put their lips and being able to really utilize that jar so that they have a really safe swallow. And we want them to be able to grow into a little bit larger of a cup. Now the mini cup is four ounces as compared to the tiny cup for infants, which is two. And again, that's more developmentally appropriate. We're giving milk at mealtime and we're not giving 12 ounces. We're giving inappropriate size of liquid so that they can eat their food and be able to continuously drink throughout the, the mealtime. And so there is that transition from the tiny to the mini.

Dawn Winkelmann (27m 12s):

And some families will say, oh, my baby is 13 months and still isn't drinking from the tiny cup independently, a hundred percent of the time. Then I'm like, give it a couple more weeks and then transition to the mini-camp

Katie Ferraro (27m 25s):

Both of the cups that Dawn developed the tiny cup for six to 12 months old, and then the mini cup for 12 months and up those cups are all available for the company that she is the feeding expert for, which is called ezpz. So if you guys go to ezpzfun.com, you can find those cups. And if you use the code, Katie10, you can get 10% off of all the feeding gear on the ezpz site, almost all of which Dawn has had a role or a hand in developing. So they're all very thoughtfully designed to help promote independent eating. And I'll go ahead and link everything up that Don talked about in today's episode, including some of the graphics that show you the feeding benefits and the features of the two different cups she's designed. That'll be on the show notes page for this episode, which is blwpodcast.com/forty.

Katie Ferraro (28m 9s):

Well, Dawn, thank you so much. This was really insightful. We now have six solid reasons to skip the sippy cup. If you guys missed them. Well, number one, it's not developmental. Number two, it causes feeding delays. Number three, sippy cups causes speech delays. Number four, they place your baby at risk for aspiration. Number five, they can impair dentition. And number six, they're generally inappropriate with regard to portion size. So if you want to check out an appropriate cup for your baby portion size, as well as all of the other feeding speech, developmental milestones, Dawn designed again, the tiny cup and the mini cup they're available at ezpzfun.com. Dawn, thank you so much for being

Dawn Winkelmann (28m 46s):

Here. Thank you. It was so fun.

Katie Ferraro (28m 48s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode, which was six reasons to skip the sippy cup with Dawn Winkelman, pretty convincing stuff, right? Like we don't need to offer our babies a sippy cup, great reasons why we don't need to do it. And if we're going to skip the sippy cup, I hope you now feel inspired to go direct from breastfeeding or bottle feeding to that open cup. Remember that milestone Dawn talked about was your baby should be able to drink out of an open cup relatively independently with minimal spillage. By the time they turned 12 months of age and you can definitely do this. So if you want to get more information about Dawn's work, she's not only a pediatric specialist in swallowing, she's a speech language pathologist.

Katie Ferraro (29m 28s):

She's also a feeding therapist. So she is a good resource to have in case things go wrong, or if you're not sure if your baby's doing okay, Dawn's got amazing resources on our website, missdawnslp.com. She's also on Instagram @DawnSLP. And if you are trying to remember, like, what were the six reasons you can go to the show notes for this episode, which is blwpodcast.com/slash40. This was episode 40 with Dawn and inside of the show notes. I've linked up all of the different references and resources that she was talking about. And I'm also going to share the graphics from ezpz that explain the features and the benefits of that tiny cup for six to 12 months old babies, and then her mini cup for 12 month old babies and up, because it's so important to see that visually as well, which I know it's sometimes kind of hard to explain on a podcast, but I think Dawn did a fabulous job.

Katie Ferraro (30m 21s):

And if you want to check out the products that you mentioned in the episode, again, the tiny cup and the mini cup, she designed those as the feeding expert for ezpz. So if you go to ezpzfun.com, the code is Katie 10 to get 10% off all of the feeding products at that fabulous website. And they're a great company, amazing quality products with really thoughtful design, the tiny cup in the mini cup, just being two of them. Again, that's ezpzfun.com. The code is Katie 10 for 10% off. And all of the resources, including links to where you can learn more about Dawn are on the show notes for this episode at blwpodcast.com/40. Thanks for listening. Bye now!