How do I start with cows milk?

[teenyanne]

My dd is 11 mo, and ff at the moment. I know she can go onto cows milk from 1 yo, but I'm not sure how to do it.

Her current milk intake - 6 oz with breakfast, 6 oz mid-afternoon and 6 oz before bed, plus 3 solid meals per day (including yogurt, cheese and cows milk on her cereal).

Should I gradually introduce cows milk by, for example, giving her cows milk for her feed in the afternoon, OR should I mix cows milk into her formula (5 oz formula, 1 oz cows milk) and increase that way? Or is it just a case of her turning 1 and me using up whatever formula we have left until and then giving her cows milk exclusively.

She is a healthy 11 mo, and I have thought about introducing cows milk in the next week or so (but I think that's my selfish get rid of the steriliser attitude) influencing me.

Anyway, opinions / experiences / advice gratefully recieved.

when DS1 went onto cows milk from formula, I just swapped one for the other. Didn't bother weaning him off formula. He seemed quite happy and didn't notice the difference!I did wait until his first birthday, but am sure given that your DD eats a lot of solid food she will be fine anytime now

I did it one feed at a time i.e. swapped 1 to cows milk and left the other as formula and when he was ok with that swapped the other to cows milk too. He didnt notice the difference either.

My friend who FFS said that she has done with both DCs
Day 1: 8oz Formula, 1oz cows (in all feeds)
Day 2: 7oz Formyla, 2oz cows
etc etc etc until it's all cows milk... Buut, she used formula for cereal etc up until a year too.

DD1 is 13 months old and for the last month she has had a fairly random mix depending on what I have in... she hasn't complained at all! but she's v easy going baby and not that fussy with food anyway.

Thanks for the replies. I think i'll try just giving her one cows milk feed a day, and if that doesn't work, i'll mix them (that at least seems like the easiest way for a lazy mother like me who's getting fed up of making formula)

My dd is quite easy going - not fussy with food and taken to having milk out of her cup instead of a bottle with no fuss, so hopefully this will be easy for us too.

Any advice out there for how to persuade breastfed babies to have cow's milk? DD looks at me like I'm trying to poison her

longtalljosie, does she have it on cereal or anything? We've started giving it to DD a few times a day now (my friend's DD just stopped nursing at 15 months and now won't have any sort of milk at all, I was scared the same thing would happen). First gave it in a bottle, I know, not the sort of thing you should be doing at a year old, now she will have it from a sippy cup or drink from an open cup if you take it slowly with her.

I think I was quite lucky... :(

No, she's always hated cereal although she'll have porridge if it has banana in it. Have tried in a bottle, in a sippy cup, a doidy cup... with pureed fruit in it to sweeten it (HV advice). She's always liked cream cheese with toast for breakfast so that's some calcium, added to that she has cheddar and we've moved to those enormous tubs of Petits Filous to keep the dairy up - but it's still not enough.

Hi longtalljosie, I bf my dd until she was one, then tried to start cow's milk (she never liked it on cereal before then either), with no joy; a bf colleague suggested watering down the cows milk, and then gradually increasing the ratio of milk to water.
She had done this with both of her little ones with success, and it worked for us too over the course of a couple of weeks. I also made sure she was drinking enough water and having calcium rich foods like yoghurt, cheese and humous, until we were on full cows milk. Worked for us anyway, hope this helps!

DS (2) was ff. On the day before his 1st birthday we ran out of formula, so I just gave him cow's milk. That simple. No "weaning off", no problems.

Oh thanks littlemefi, I'll try that from tomorrow