The Doidy Cup Review & Giveaway

My exclusively breastfed baby has, to put it mildly, never really taken to bottles. We did manage for a while over the summer to get her to use a sippy cup as a chew toy, which had the added side effect of squirting valuable drops of water in her mouth.

Then we discovered the Doidy cup, and I was rather intrigued by its unusual shape. The idea behind this design is so that babies as young as three months could hold it, tip it slightly enough to see the liquid and be able to drink without a gush of water falling on them.

In theory I love the idea and to an extent it worked – I gave it to my then eight month old and she was perfectly capable of holding it steadily in two hands, taking a sip, swallowing and then lowering. Unfortunately that is where it fell apart for her as she would then start swinging the cup around, turning it upside down and using it as a handwash basin, causing water to fly everywhere.

A workaround was for me to hold the cup for her (which can be done from birth), and here the elongated slant made it much easier for me to see when the water was at her lips, which helped reduce spillage too and means she can drink ‘normally’ without having to tilt her head too far backwards.

I think it’s an ideal first drinking cup, but perhaps for an older child, unless you have the time and patience to teach a younger one that the drinking cup is not a toy; something I failed miserably at.

The Doidy cup is dishwasher safe and made from food safe HD Plyethylene and BPA free and confirms to the EN14350 standard for child use and care. According to their website, various health professionals are “advising use of the Doidy Cup to prevent long term health problems caused by delayed weaning and prolonged use of feeding bottles and spouted cups”.

The cup is a durable and hard plastic, and I would love to see Doidy produce a more environmentally friendly alternative, such as bamboo, but until they do, it is still a great purchase and incredibly helpful if you want your bottle-refusers to drink something other than milk.

A Diary of a First Child reader can win a Doidy Cup simply by looking at their website, choosing your favourit of the 10 colours the Doidy Cup comes in and leaving a comment here to let me know which it is. The competition closes at 12 GMT on 11 October 2010, a winner will be chosen at random using Random.org and is open to UK entries only.

If you can’t wait that long, you can buy the Doidy cup from their website at £3.70 or from John Lewis at £3.50.

You do not have to tweet or share this competition to enter, but doing so helps ensure that I can keep bringing you giveaways every week! You can subscribe to Diary of a First Child by RSS, email or through Google Friend Connect (see the bottom to the right). You can also follow us on Facebook or on Twitter. We hope to see you back again soon!

Small Print:

The colour of prize cup is yellow.

Please leave an email address/blog address/twitter name where I can contact the winner. If I am unable to make contact within one week I will select a new winner and the previously selected winner will have no recourse to the prize.

The winner is: Ruth Mulcaster! Congratulations 🙂