Milk drinks at two years old.

[springbelle]

My DD has just turned two. She has a very healthy and varied diet most of the time but doesn't drink an awful lot. I try to give her water or diluted fruit juice in various cups/with straws etc etc, but she doesn't really drink that much. Partly because of this I still give her formula in a bottle on waking and before bed (teeth brushed straight after) because she enjoys this and drinks a fair bit. I tried to get her on to normal cows milk when she turned one but she was not keen (she has it on cereal though and in cooking).
The formula she is on is Aptamil follow on as I was not keen on the 1 year toddler milk as it smelt sweeter than the follow on. Should she really be having the 2 year milk now as it is tailored to her age? I don't want to cut the formula out completely as it is the one thing she will gulp down with gusto! Advice gladly accepted.......

[SouthGoingZax]

i think all the follow on milks are quite sweet. Maybe compare sugar content between that and cows' milk.

I would try again to get her on cows' milk rather than the expensive follow on milk - I suggest you start with almost all Aptimil with a tiny dash of cows for a couple of days, then gradually up the amount of cows milk and reduce the formula.

My DTs are just 2 (last weekend) and about 2 months ago I switched to sippy cups in the morning and now mugs (they had them for their birthday and love them!) of milk after supper at night, while they are still in the high chairs. I was having trouble getting them to drink their milk, let me brush teeth and bed time was going on and on, so I just decided to stop the bedtime bottle of milk and instead offer milk at the end of supper.

Also, I think most of what formula companies say about the milks being 'tailored to their age' is complete rubbish - if your DD has a healthy, varied diet, you don't need to worry about that at all. Just marketing guff.

[alana39]

Completely agree with South, one of my 3 didn't like cow's milk when we switched at 1 so we introduced it by mixing with formula at first.

We also had problems getting the 1st 2 off bottles for milk (although they used cups happily for water) but at about 2.3 they both switched happily so don't worry too much, it will come.

[Octaviapink]

I'd ditch the bottles entirely and do the gradual move to cow's milk. Diluted fruit juice is pretty bad for their teeth as well. You might find that once you ditch the bottles of formula then she starts drinking more because she's thirstier (rather than wait for her to drink more before you drop the bottles, IYSWIM). Also don't forget that most food is mostly water, and calcium can be got from other dairy products, so not drinking much cow's milk isn't really a problem.

[springbelle]

Thanks ladies.

I will try the formula/cows milk mix to begin with, then change to cups I think.

Octavia you are probably right that she would drink more water if she wasn't having the formula. She actually prefers plain water to diluted fruit juice, I only tried her with it to see if she would drink more. I realise fruit acids can be very harmful to enamel and she does have a lovely set of teeth that I would hate to damage :).