cows milk at 6 months- help! (long)

[breadandroses]

I am exclusively breastfeeding my 4 months old twins, and have no plans to stop soon. Now, as you can imagine I currently spend most of the time holed up at home with them (weirdly they don't like feeding separately, fuss more etc so I feed them together). This is not something I want to do in public!

If I give them a daily bottle so we can get out a bit more, can I bypass formula and go straight on to cows milk, given that we are not an allergic family, and babies can have what my hv describes as a "small amount" of cows milk from 6 months?

There are lots of reasons why I don't want to give formula (hate the smell, expense, and y'know all the babymilk action stuff) and I hate (and am rubbish at) expressing so I was hoping to give them normal milk, about the time I start weaning them (might blw but am possibly too chicken). It will strictly be just one bottle in order to not become a hermit. So is this ok, or will it bugger their guts up? And if you've read this far, thanks

I think when I had DS1 (all those many 8 years ago) the advice then was that babies could have cows milk (but not as their main milk?) at 6 months. In between it seems to have changed (can anyone else confirm this)... Wee'uns tummies can't have evolved so differently in 8 years if this is the case?

They can't have cows milk till 12 months but can have cows milk products eg cheese, yoghurt. I think its because cows milk isn't nutritionally sufficient until after 12 months. I don't think there is much option at 6 months other than formula.

They can have cows' milk in cereal, porridge, sauces etc from 6m, just not as a main drink - which to me implies Not In A Bottle...

The reason for not giving cow's milk as a drink at 6 month has something to do with the proteins (casein?) being undigestible for an immature human get and this could cause intestinal bleeding, which in turn could lead to anaemia etc. etc.

Where I live we're advised against giving cow's milk at all before 12mths, not even in sauces etc., but allowed to give mature cheese and yogurts because the enzymes have partially digested the proteins, makiing it easier on the gut..

I don't know about the casein thing (hungry baby formula is full of it) but cow's milk doesn't have enough vitamin C (and other important stuff I imagine) to support a human baby. However, it is breast milk that is supporting your babies, not cow's milk, which would just be an occasional drink and that doesn't sound like it will cause problems to me. I'm not speaking as anyone with specialised knowledge though.

I gave DD cow juice occasionally from about 9.5 months alongside breastfeeding her BTW.