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Children's health

Cows milk advice

5 replies

youaremychocolatecake · 21/03/2015 09:30

Not really sure where this post belongs but just wanted to ask some advice really. My son is almost 17 months and was EBF until January. Total bottle refuser. Anyway, I ended up having to quit quite suddenly as none of the Gentler were working for us (but thats another story) after about a week of refusing any milk he eventually started to drink cow and gate follow on milk (the ready made kind) i let him have it for 2-3 weeks and because I know it's all a bit of a con, I slowly started switching him over to cows milk bit by bit.

After a few days he came down with a a cold, bad conjunctivitis and grainy diarrhoea. I wondered if it could be the milk so I took him to the GP who was adamant it probably wasn't because a dairy allergy would have presented itself during breastfeeding, formula is also cows milk and it's very rare to have any allergy. Coincidence she said and the virus was causing the diarrhea. So she said to switch him back to the formula (as possibly the processing has removed one of the things that's upsetting him) wait for him to be totally better and then switch back. So it's been about another month or so on formula. He only likes the ready made and drinks about a litre a day (expensive!) last week I decided it was time to switch again - partly because we are going away for 10 days in May and don't fancy carting 10 litres of milk with me

Low and behold, another horrible cold, puffy red eyes and this time constipation! I kind of want to believe it's another coincidence but I don't want to continue giving him the milk if it's making him poorly

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Thanks x

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KeturahLee · 21/03/2015 10:39

I haven't had a similar experience but a litre seems an excessive amount for a child of that age - I think the recommendation is about 300ml to fulfil their nutritional needs.

Is he ok with cooked milk in food? They don't really need to drink milk at all at that age, my DD didn't. You could just make sure he gets enough calcium through food and keep milk to a minimum.