Teaching baby to drink water

We've started trying to teach our now 7 month old baby to drink water, and he loves it.  Drinking water seems pretty simple, but there are several things to consider.  My wife read that you should start by teaching the baby to drink from a regular glass before giving baby a sippy-cup.  This is not a neat process, but at least it's only water.  We got new waterproof bibs that serve merely to deflect the water to soak such areas as the pants, the floor, or your clothes.  Unless you employ my new "Bib Over Bib" technique, but I'll explain that in more detail later.

They say not to give a child water until they're at least 6 months old; they get all the hydration they need from the milk or formula.  It can be dangerous to give a baby water before 6 months because it can upset the balance of baby's electrolytes causing serious problems, or at the least filling baby's stomach with water when they need the nutrition of milk or formula.  Up to this point he's had both milk and formula, always from a bottle.  For a few weeks now he's been fascinated by our eating and drinking, and watches us intently when we have a glass of water.

I try to keep the glass of water out of his line of sight behind me until he's stopped eating his oatmeal and fruit or vegetable.  I'm trying to set up a one to one relationship between sips of water and bites of food, so I have to be able to switch between the spoon and the cup quickly.  If he has enough room to drink water he has room for more food, although he does protest when I switch to food.

He only drinking about half a cup of water in a sitting, if that.  At this point it's more about learning to hold the cup and tip it back rather than staying hydrated.  We use water filtered with a Brita water pitcher (that I then pour into glass bottles and store in the refrigerator).  We use water from the tap when mixing formula for the bottle, but I don't like the taste of tap water because of the fluoride and other chemicals they use to treat the water.  I'm conflicted as to the use of fluoride in water; there are dental benefits but what are the side effects?  People existed long before we had fluorinated water, and I'm nervous about all the chemicals that have worked their way into everything.  We're compromising by using a little of both.

Bib over bib technique

The bib over bib technique works pretty well, and I'm sure you have it half figured out from the title alone.  Up until now we've always used cloth bibs.  They get dirty when he eats solid food but never so bad that his clothes get food on them.  Now we have waterproof bibs for drinking water, but when used singly they only keep the area directly underneath them dry.  At first we would feed baby with the cloth bib as usual, then put the waterproof bib on over it when it was time for water.  His pants would get wet, the bottom of his shirt would get wet, and sometimes I would end up wet too.  By putting the cloth bib over the waterproof bib the water is absorbed by the cloth and the waterproof bib keeps the clothes from getting wet.  The key is that the waterproof bib is larger than the cloth bib.  It works well to keep him dry, but it's inevitable that he gets a little wet.