6 Reasons to Skip the Sippy Cup with Dawn Winkelmann, MS, CCC-SLP

Katie Ferraro (0s):

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Dawn Winkelmann (33s):

The sippy cup promotes a tongue thrusting movement where the tongue moves forward with each swallow and this tongue thrust pattern often carries over into eating. So when a baby starts solid, like parents notice that their little one may be constantly pushing their food out of their mouth and they may assume that their baby doesn't like the food or they can't do Baby-Led Weaning. But often it's not a feeding issue, it's a swallowing pattern that has been shaped by the use of the sippy cup.

Katie Ferraro (1m 3s):

Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in Baby-Led Weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning. Hello and welcome back. Today we're gonna dive into a topic that stirs up a lot of questions and more controversy than you might think, and that is the sippy cup. You have probably seen sippy cups everywhere. Maybe you haven't bought a sippy cup yet, but you're like, what does your baby drink after breast milk or after drinking outta the bottle?

Katie Ferraro (1m 48s):

And I know personally as a new parent, I just thought, oh, you go from breast or bottle to drinking out of a sippy cup. But what if I told you that sippy cups might actually be doing more harm than good? So to help unpack this, I'm gonna be joined today by my very good friend, fellow Baby-Led Weaning expert Dawn Winkelmann. She's s a speech language pathologist, a pediatric feeding and swallowing expert. Donna is a total authority when it comes to oral motor development and she's here to talk about why she recommends skipping the sippy cup. So how exactly do babies benefit when they skip the sippy cups? So we're talk about kind of the bad stuff that sippy cups do. We might not even realize it like as a dietitian, of course I get that sippy cups are not ideal, right?

Katie Ferraro (2m 30s):

They promote over consumption. I remember the time my sister-in-law who had kids before I did, she was like, oh my gosh, we just went to the doctor and my daughter, she's gaining too much weight. And they were worried about her like, what do you think it is? Like she's a good eater, but I don't let her have sweets or snacks. And like as she's saying this, my niece is toddling around with a like 16 ounce plastic Nalgene sippy cup just sucking the living daylights out of milk. And I was like, how much milk is she drinking? She's like, I don't know why I thought milk was good and fine. It's like, yeah, a little bit of milk is. But this is a toddler who was drinking like so much cow's milk. She was doing that three times a day. So it's almost 45 ounces of cow's milk that she was drinking a day.

Katie Ferraro (3m 12s):

Of course she was gonna have unintended weight gain. So sippy cups from a nutritional standpoint certainly promote over consumption. But Dawn is gonna be talking about a lot of other reasons why sippy cups are not ideal. Now Dawn's been on the podcast a ton of time. She's actually the most frequent guest that I've ever had. Like I call her for every single like nerdy SLP related swallowing cup straw saying that I've got on my mind. You might also be curious about straw cups. So we're not covering straw cups in today's episode 'cause we're gonna focus on the sippy cups. But if you got straw cups on the brain, go check out episode 101. It's called Straw Cup vs Open Cup, Which Comes First. That's a different interview with Dawn blwpodcast.com/101 for that one.

Katie Ferraro (3m 54s):

Today's focus is on six reasons to skip the sippy cup. And Dawn, I should also add in addition to like her many other accolades and all the amazing stuff that she is, she is my real life like very good friend, but she's got a lot of letters after her name too. She's the product designer for EZPZ. So EZPZ is the company that makes all of the feeding gear that I use exclusively for Baby-Led Weaning. Dawn designed the award-winning Baby-Led Weaning Tiny Cup. This is the first cup for Baby-Led Weaning. It's a two ounce cup. We recommend you start Open Cup Practice five minutes a day after each meal, around the time when your baby is six months of age. The goal being that by the time your baby turns one, they should be able to drink out of an open cup on their own, albeit with a little bit of spillage. So we're gonna talk about sippy cups and why to skip them, but the answer, what to do if you're not doing the sippy cup is the open cup and Dawn's gonna teach you all about that.

Katie Ferraro (4m 39s):

If you wanna check out the tiny cup that she designed, if you head to ezpzfun.com/babyled got all of my favorite Baby-Led Weaning feeding gear from EZPZ lined up there. And if you use the code BABYLED, that'll get you 15% off at checkout. Again, that site is ezpzfun.com/babyled. So with no further ado, I wanna bring on a Dawn Winkelmann who's gonna be sharing six powerful reasons why she thinks sippy cups just are not worth it. And what you can do instead and how you can help your baby learn to drink out of an open cup so you can skip that sippy cup. Here's Dawn.

Dawn Winkelmann (5m 23s):

So one story that always sticks out to me is about a mom that came to me that was totally defeated. Her nine month old daughter had been drinking from a sippy cup. Things were going really good. They started the sippy cup around five months of age and everything seemed fine. And then when she started solids at six months, things went downhill really fast. Her daughter would push out all the food that she was offering to her baby, whether she was spoonfeeding her baby or whether she was doing a baby-led approach and allowing her baby to actually bring spoonfuls of food up to her mouth. But her daughter kept spitting everything out and she thought that she hated the food.

Dawn Winkelmann (6m 5s):

She thought that she wasn't doing it right. She thought that she was a bad mom. And when she called me she said that I feel like I'm doing everything right, but she just can't eat. And I started asking her about, you know, the products that she's using and she mentioned that she was using a sippy cup. And I said, well stop using the sippy cup for a couple weeks and see how starting solids goes then. And she called me back up and said, oh my gosh, everything has changed. I thought the sippy cup was helping, but it was actually holding her back 'cause it was really promoting that tongue thrust. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about skipping the sippy cup.

Katie Ferraro (6m 42s):

So basically what she was practicing with the sippy cup, she was then translating that as she was simultaneously trying to learn how to food thrusting that food out of her mouth, which made the mom think she couldn't do it. Which yes, and we know it's not true, right? That by that time when your baby's safe to start solid foods, they can learn how to safely swallow those foods.

Dawn Winkelmann (6m 59s):

Yes.

Katie Ferraro (7m 0s):

And we're gonna talk about the drawbacks of sippy cups in this episode. But for background, Dawn, can you just give us the history? You know, you know a lot about product design as an award winning product designer, but who invented the sippy cup? Why was it designed? Was it designed with baby's development in mind? Because I know personally As a new mom, I just thought, oh, you go like breast or bottle to a sippy cup and then just someday they learn how to drink out of an open cup. And you really opened my mind with all this open cup business. But take us back to the history of the sippy cup.

Dawn Winkelmann (7m 26s):

Well, the sippy cup was invented in the 1980s by a mechanical engineer who simply wanted to stop having spills happen at home. And it was a practical solution for parents. It was designed for convenience, but it wasn't designed for child development. And here is why that matters. The spout of a traditional sippy cup doesn't support the oral motor skills needed for speech and chewing and swallowing. Instead of encouraging the tongue to elevate and move in a very more mature swallowing pattern like it would with an open cup or a straw cup, the sippy cup promotes a tongue thrusting movement where the tongue moves forward with each swallow.

Dawn Winkelmann (8m 11s):

And this tongue thrust pattern often carries over into eating. So when a baby starts solid, like the story that I just shared, parents notice that their little one may be constantly pushing their food out of their mouth and they may assume that their baby doesn't like the food or they can't do baby lid winging. But often it's not a feeding issue, it's a swallowing pattern that has been shaped by the use of the sippy cup. But I understand that the appeal for parents, and I'm not saying that a sippy cup can never be used, it can be used on rare occasions, but it's just not a product that I recommend for daily use sippy cups stop spills. Yes, but you know what else prevents spills?

Dawn Winkelmann (8m 53s):

Encouraging your little ones to obtain their fine motor milestones, obtain their swallowing milestones So that they don't spill. And you can do that by introducing an open cup or a straw cup with your baby.

Katie Ferraro (9m 4s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

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Katie Ferraro (11m 20s):

So Dawn, we have been friends just as you know, some background now for almost seven years when Gus and Hannah were babies, I remember I met you for the first time. I literally brought them to a trade show and then like you helped me watch my babies and we were brainstorming a lot of different Baby-Led Weaning projects and you were the one that introduced me to open cups because you had actually, the tiny cup was in like a beta test. Like I think we had the prototype of it and it was so cool to get, I remember like taking videos of them drinking out of it and sending it back to you and You guys were tweaking stuff. I think a lot of parents are surprised to learn that they should skip the sippy cup cup. I know you taught me that 'cause your baby can go right from breast or bottle to an open cup. Why is open cup drinking so important to you?

Katie Ferraro (12m 2s):

A a speech language pathologist and a pediatric swallowing expert?

Dawn Winkelmann (12m 5s):

Open cup drinking is incredibly important to me because, well one, it was, you know, I'm most well known for the design of the Tiny Cup and for those of you who don't know how that kind of came to be, I was giving advice to my clients and saying, you know, you know you need to get an open cup. And these parents were walking down the aisles at Target and all they saw were sippy cups. There were no open cups on the market.

Katie Ferraro (12m 31s):

Dude, we were using the plastic shot glasses from BevMo Dawn.

Dawn Winkelmann (12m 35s):

Yes, yes I was. And I wanted to have something that was safer for babies to be able to use. You know, I was doing, like you said, shot glasses and babies were bringing that cup up to their mouth and knocking out their front teeth. And it's really important to think about design. And for me personally, my expertise wasn't just in therapy rooms. I wanted to understand parents' real needs, solve real problems and help parents come up with a better solution, but also have that solution, have evidence-based knowledge that can make a difference with these families. I had to trust my designs weren't just ideas, they were just solutions that could change lives and help families and fill a gap that no one else had addressed before.

Dawn Winkelmann (13m 17s):

And that was to provide a safe, open, open cup that was made out of food grade silicone that was soft so it wouldn't impact the teeth or knock their their teeth out and be able to offer that at a price point that was easy for parents to be able to get and also be able to allow them to feel more comfortable having their baby drink from an open cup and making that a little bit easier, no handles and having their hands be able to wrap around the cup and so babies can be able to bring that to their mouth. Open cup drinking is incredibly important because it supports so many aspects of baby's development.

Dawn Winkelmann (13m 59s):

It's not just feeding when babies drink from an open cup, they're learning how to coordinate their lips and their tongue and their jaw and breathe in a way that mirrors the skills that they need for chewing and safe swallowing and even speech production. And unlike a sippy cup, which encourages an immature sucking pattern, an open cup actually promotes good patterns like tongue elevation, which is a foundational movement for oral development. It strengthens the muscles needed for clear speech, it reduces the risk of things like prolonged drooling or tooth decay or oral aversions. And this might surprise some of your listeners, but the developmental milestones for open cup drinking is that at six months of age they can drink and swallow from an open cup held by a caregiver.

Dawn Winkelmann (14m 47s):

So this is a really essential way to establish trust, to be able to allow babies to start to work on that lip closure and that tongue elevation. And then by 12 months of age, babies should be able to drink and swallow from an open cup independently. So they're bringing that cup up to their mouth and with some spillage of course, and practicing these movements independently. And then that same baby once they reach 24 months of age, should be able to drink from an open cup with nose spillage, swallow your saliva and feel your tongue go up to the roof of your mouth that is called tongue elevation. And feel how your tongue suctions to that roof of your mouth.

Dawn Winkelmann (15m 29s):

That is called palatal suction. And this is a correct way to swallow and six month old babies should be swallowing that way. Now let's pretend that you're drinking from a sippy cup. Feel that difference, that tongue positioning that is going up instead of going out of the mouth is the foundation for nose breathing and for feeding and eating and swallowing and speech because that's where your tongue is supposed to be at rest.

Katie Ferraro (15m 59s):

So Dawn, as a dietitian, I've got my own reasons why I don't like sippy cups. Namely that they promote the overconsumption of milk or whatever else you're putting in there. That in turn is gonna take valuable room in your baby's stomach up. It displaces other important foods, creates this constant sense of fullness coming from infant milk or cow's milk if we're doing toddlers as an SLP. Can you tell me what are some of the speech or the feeding slash swallowing concerns that you have that come from extended use of a sippy cup? You mentioned a few of them, but like can you go through 'em in order for us?

Dawn Winkelmann (16m 28s):

The first reason is that they're not developmental. Sippy cups are unnecessary. So there's no feeding milestone that requires your baby to learn how to suck out of a hard plastic cap. There are cup milestones, open cup milestones and straw milestones. And those are the two cups that your baby needs to learn from. Those are the two cups that are developmentally appropriate. We are working on different skills with those two cups with an open cup. We're working on lip closure around the rim of the cup. We're working on tongue elevation, we're working on being able to breathe through the nose with the straw cup.

Dawn Winkelmann (17m 9s):

We're working on lip rounding instead of lip closure. We're working on holding the breath and tongue elevation as well. So those are really essential skills when we talk about holding our breath and those respiratory patterns, those are the same patterns that we use to be able to produce really good speech. I'm taking a breath through my nose, I'm exhaling my air and being able to talk on that. So these are really important skills. And sippy cups actually kind of delay babies from being able to reach some of these milestones because as you said, Katie, parents think that they go from breast or bottle to a sippy cup and then to an open cup and a straw cup.

Dawn Winkelmann (17m 52s):

And actually that delay in time that families are using a sippy cup instead of moving right along to open cup drinking. And straw drinking can actually prevent baby from making these milestones in the age range that we were hoping for, which also can delay some issues with, you know, speech development, which is number two. I see a lot of babies that are using a sippy cup and then places them at risk for some speech and language delays. So that's my second reason to skip a sippy cup because when we're using a sippy cup and using that tongue thrust, we're not really babbling. So these babies, if they're drinking from an open cup, you know, and I'm going to use an open cup for those of you who are listening and, and babies drinking and they're making all these sounds while they're drinking from an open cup or maybe they're blowing into the open cup and blowing some bubbles.

Dawn Winkelmann (18m 47s):

All of these developmental movements help with speech production. We want some babbling, we want some syllable use. We want babies to have fun with being able to hear the echo from the open cup of their own voice to get them to want to talk a little bit more. And you just don't get that feedback when you're using a sippy cup. So we want those speech and language milestones to start to help when we're also talking about speech and language milestones. When a child is drinking from a sippy cup, they're usually kind of walking around or crawling around with that sippy cup hanging out and there's really not a lot of language that baby's hearing either from us as the feeders and the caregivers.

Dawn Winkelmann (19m 27s):

Whereas when we're using open cup, oh parents are really zoned in on that. They're like, oh, you're drinking the cup. Oh, you're taking a sip. Oh, don't tip it too much. They're hearing all these vocabulary words and all this receptive language and expressive language. And so it's really promoting more conversation at mealtime too, which we really just don't get when you're using a sippy cup. So when the tongue doesn't practice tongue elevation, it really doesn't practice, you know, the sounds that we use in speech. The third reason for skipping the sippy cup is that it can place them at risk for aspiration. Aspiration is when food or liquids goes down the wrong way or the wrong pipe, sometimes people say, and basically that liquid can go down into the lungs and can cause some medical issues.

Dawn Winkelmann (20m 15s):

So learning to drink out of a sippy cup can sometimes confuse the baby because they have to tilt their head way back in order to get the liquid. And that is not what you do with an open cup or straw cup. We're leaning forward and taking those sips and so it's really putting 'em in a compromised position for drinking. When we tilt our head back like we would drinking from a sippy cup, we open our airway, whereas when we're drinking an open cup or drinking from a straw cup, our head is slightly tilted, our chin is tilted towards our chest and so it protects our airway. And these movements allow the airway to be slightly closed and promotes more safer swallowing by opening up the esophagus.

Dawn Winkelmann (20m 60s):

So it can really help them with their drinking. The fourth reason to skip the sippy cup is in a way to protect their dentition. I have a collection of nod,

Katie Ferraro (21m 11s):

It's so disgusting.

Dawn Winkelmann (21m 13s):

I know.They're so gross.

Katie Ferraro (21m 14s):

It's so gross. She saves like gnarly, chewed up sippy cup tops and has a basket of them in her office. And I've seen them in person. It's so gross. Send on all of your gnarled sippy cup tops so you can stop putting plastic in your baby's mouth also.

Dawn Winkelmann (21m 28s):

Yes, yes. Because it's, it's a great visual for parents. So when I go over to do feeding therapy, I do in-home feeding therapy and I go over and I see what their child is drinking from and.

Katie Ferraro (21m 37s):

She spies on your on the drain board. I remember you telling me about a parent and you were like, she's like, oh, I'm not using a sippy cup. And you're like, Hmm, what's that in your drain board? Not to judge, but like, you know, these are products that you, you think are developmental and you're like, it's actually having the opposite of the intended effect.

Dawn Winkelmann (21m 52s):

Yes, absolutely. And I'll use these as a way to be able to teach families of how it's really impacting their dentition because they're not on, or it tells me a lot too about as a feeding and swallowing therapist, when I look at these sippy cups, I'll see that maybe the sippy cup spout is not on on the right side, but not the left side. And then I'll do an oral assessment and see that, oh yeah, there's lots of development going on on the right side of the mouth, but not so much on the left side of the mouth. So then it helps me to refer to an airway dentist, refer to an oral facial biologist because what is happening in the mouth by using a hard piece of plastic in the mouth is that it changes the way that our jaws are growing.

Dawn Winkelmann (22m 33s):

It changes the way our teeth are growing and I've suctioned out plastic s slivers from baby's throats in the hospital settings. I've seen babies spit out microplastics because they're scraping that. And it doesn't matter if you're using a soft spouted sippy cup or a hard spouted sippy cup. These cups are designed to impact where the teeth are an impact, where the tongue is in order to make it easier for them to be able to drink.

Katie Ferraro (23m 4s):

And we're not gonna get into the 360 or spout list cups, but I do just wanna let those listening know if you're interested in those. 'Cause people say, are those good or bad? Go listen to episode 396 are 360 cups. Ok, another interview that I did with Dawn and she's gonna go through all of the limitations of that cup. So that's episode 396. blwpodcast.com/396 if you'd like to hear that.

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Dawn Winkelmann (24m 6s):

The fifth reason I skip sippy cups is portion size, because parents don't realize that portion size does play a role in swallowing development. Most sippy cups hold 10 to 15 ounces of liquid, which is way more than what babies need at one given time. And that large volume encourages babies to guzzle without control or awareness of how much they're swallowing. It's often an unobserved or rapid swallow that can actually increase the risk of choking or overfilling them mouth. I can't tell you how many times I've seen babies tilt their head back, start to drink and then start to cough and sputter. And then parents are wondering why they can't get their child off of a bottle because they're having so much difficulty swallowing with the sippy cups.

Dawn Winkelmann (24m 52s):

In contrast, the EZPZ tiny cup that a design holds just two ounces, which is more developmentally appropriate than 10 or 15 ounces, it gives babies the opportunity to practice purposeful, safe swallowing. They take small sips, they learn to pace themselves, they stay more aware on how much is in their mouth, they are more aware of what their tongue is doing, what their throat is doing, and how their swallowing is working together. So portion size isn't just about how much baby's drinking, it's about how they're learning to drink smaller cups, support skill building and bigger cups can promote gulping and guzzling and and swallowing a lot of air, which can cause more burping and gagging and gas and so many other issues.

Dawn Winkelmann (25m 38s):

My sixth reason for skipping the sippy is I always say sippy cups sabotage solids. So sippy cups can actually cause some feeding delays. And in my experience, that is a lot of why parents come to me for therapy is because they were using sippy cups just like the story that I was sharing at the very beginning. And they reinforce that immature swallow pattern. So it makes starting solids harder to manage. Parents get frustrated with baby constantly just, you know, tongue thrusting that food out and it's leading the parents to think that they're doing something wrong or that they're not being successful or that they're not good parents.

Dawn Winkelmann (26m 21s):

I can't tell you how many times mom said, I'm not a good mom, dad say, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but she's not swallowing it. They think that the baby has a swallowing disorder and they're coming to me for swallowing therapy, but it's really the swallowing pattern that's actually holding them back and delaying that development. And not only does it delay that development with starting solids, but it can also delay that development of transitioning to the open cup, transitioning to the straw cup. So then where parents end up happening is that, you know, they're trying to get their baby off of that bottle by that first birthday because that's what we all recommend. You know, between 12 and 15 months, you want babies to be off that bottle, the parents have nowhere to go because the baby's struggling with starting solids and spitting out all the food they're struggling with being able to transition to an open cup or to a straw cup because their baby is just wanting to drink from a sippy cup.

Dawn Winkelmann (27m 18s):

So it can really start to combat a lot of feeding challenges and feeding delays for parents. And so that's a lot of my private practice is kind of helping families decrease the, the sippy cups start to increase the skillset that they need for starting solids and being able to help them translate those skills into open cup drinking and straw drinking.

Katie Ferraro (27m 40s):

We talk so much about the importance of open cup drinking and starting it at around six months of age. And I, I always tell parents, you know, to be honest, I never really got around it, especially with the twins till they were closer to eight months of age. But even then they were able to meet that milestone of drinking independently outta that open cup, albeit with a little bit of spillage by the time they turned 12 months of age. So for parents that are in our program, by the time they get to phase two or three of Baby-Led Weaning, they're like, listen, I got the textures down. We're doing combination multi textured foods, we've done all the allergens, but I'm really struggling with the open cup and the stress of the parents. And I remember this myself is, I'm so worried my baby's gonna be dehydrated. And it's like, well listen, I know your baby's very competent at drinking outta the breast or the bottle. We've established that and we've been working really hard for these last 16, 20 weeks to get your baby, to get most of their nutrition from food.

Katie Ferraro (28m 22s):

But you have to trust the process when it comes to the open cup drinking. If you do the five minutes of open cup drinking after each meal, I promise you they get so proficient at drinking outta the open cup that once you phase that bottle or decrease your breastfeeding, if that's your goal, as part of that weaning process, everything kind of clicks together and they go to town on that open cup. And at that point, that's really, it's kinda the icing on the cake with weaning, right? We're getting most of our nutrition from food by the age of one. They're meeting their hydration needs, drinking out of an open cup. Oh my gosh. But they're gonna drink so much less out of an open cup. Yes, that's the point of weaning is that we're getting less nutrition from milk. So I can't say enough about everything related to the design of the tiny cup, which is so genius.

Katie Ferraro (29m 4s):

But for me as a dietitian, the portion size, that two ounce portion, which you don't fill it all the way up, even if you do it about three quarters of the way closer to the one year mark, that's one and a half ounces. You do that two times after each meal, that's 3, 6, 9 ounces of milk that they're getting nine to 10 ounces after their meals, and then maybe a small bottle or breastfeeding session and boom, you've got their hydration needs, then you can start working the water in, et cetera. So if I can say anything about the roll of the tiny cup in helping, you know, to really advance the field of Baby-Led Weaning in the last seven, eight years, it's been that it fills that missing piece for hydration, which is no, you don't need a sippy cup. The open cup helps for all the the reasons that you showed us, but it really helps promote and enforce all that hard work you've been doing, getting your baby to learn how to eat real food.

Dawn Winkelmann (29m 49s):

Absolutely. And to piggyback on that kitty, is that when I ask parents how much baby is drinking when they're on a sippy cup, they can't tell me because that sippy cup is around all day long that they don't know. I'm like, so how many ounces are they drinking in the morning? I'm not sure.

Katie Ferraro (30m 8s):

Oh, and then throw in daycare or a grandmother. Yes. Or a partner. No one's keeping track. And these kids oftentimes are adding, you know, any with two, three times the amount of milk, which that's all significant portion of calories, that's oftentimes we see a lot of unintended weight gain arising from that on top of the fact, I love your line, you know, sippy cup sabotage solid foods. Because if you're constantly full, meaning that you're not allowed to experience the feeling, what I call casual hunger, you're never gonna eat that food that your parents are so lovingly preparing for you if you're constantly full of milk. And again, parents are running around with this idea, oh my gosh, my baby, you know, I've got my own bottle of water. I mean, other people do I, I'm terrible at drinking water, but like we're so hyper fixated on fluids and hydration, but like your baby's getting most of their nutrition needs from the small amount of infant milk you're offering, plus the foods that your baby's learning how to eat.

Katie Ferraro (30m 54s):

You know, with some, a few exceptions that some babies have higher fluid needs, but for the most part I think that's very eye-opening for parents. Like, oh my gosh, they need so much less fluid towards the end of the weaning period than I initially thought they did.

Dawn Winkelmann (31m 6s):

Absolutely. And then it just starts a pattern, right? The older that baby gets, the more sippy cups that parents use, and then it really goes into that first birthday that that baby is having so much milk with that sippy cup and it really can promote the overconsumption of milk, which is one of the leading causes of extreme picky eating. So it just really starts to make everything harder, harder during the starting solid months, harder during the transitioning off of a bottle months and definitely harder when babies naturally go through a picky eating phase.

Katie Ferraro (31m 45s):

Well Dawn, thank you so much for all this information. As always, I'd love chatting with you and hearing from you, tell our audience where they can go to learn more about your work and to to support your products and your business. They can check out the products that I designed at ezpzfun.com. And if you'd like to follow along for more tips and product updates and sensory play ideas, you can find me on Instagram at msdawnslp. Well, I hope You guys enjoyed that interview with Dawn Winkelmann. I love when she gets going, sharing her passion about why to skip the sippy cup. If you want to check out some of the other episodes with Dawn, I'll link them up. Everything's gonna be on the show notes page for this episode. If you go to blwpodcast.com/40, you can find that if you wanna check out the EZPZ tiny cup.

Katie Ferraro (32m 29s):

And then when you're ready, there's straw cup for older babies. That's at ezpzfun.com/babyled. And use that code BABYLED to get 15% off all of the EZPZ feeding gear. A special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We're online at blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Fun Facts Daily (33m 1s):

You ever wonder why flamingos are pink or how much taller the Eiffel Tower gets when the iron swells in the summer? Heat Fun facts daily covers The odd and interesting things most of us never learned about in school. Like did you know the Apollo 15 astronauts put a sculpture on the moon? Satisfy your curiosity every weekday with fun facts daily you'll get fun facts, award of the day, practical tips and brain teasers that'll challenge you to tell fact from fiction. So start everyday smarter with fun facts daily, wherever you get your podcasts.