Has anyone ever had this advice re. cow's milk ...... ?

[Ghosty]

That you shouldn't give a baby cow's milk until they have 16 teeth.
This is what my Plunket Nurse (NZ equiv. to HV) said to me today at DD's 9 month check.
She said it was because cow's milk has more fat than formula but less calcium and as they are teething they need more calcium.
I suppose it makes sense sort of,
but if DD (who is b/f with one bottle of formula a day at the moment) is anything like her brother, she will be 20 months before she gets her 16 teeth and that is a long time to wait for cow's milk isn't it?

Has anyone else had this bizarre advice?

Never heard of that one before!

if that was the case, DD1 wouldn't have had cows milk for ages as she didn't cut her first tooth till she was 13 months old. I gave her milk to 12 months as thats the recommendation here

Never.

Seeing as DS is 11 months and nearly has 4 teeth I think it will take a long time for him to get 16 teeth.

At the moment I'm planning to switch him to cow's milk around 1 year. He has plenty of other calcium so I think will be OK

Strange idea. The teeth are made in the gums, before they come out, not just generated as they push out! And most of the calcium babies need is for bones, not teeth, I would think.

Never heard of it. I would imagine all kids are different when it comes to teeth coming through. My DD has been having cows milk since 9.5 months and is positively blooming.

Also - great name for a HV. You NZs always have better names for things. My kiwi friends have introduced me to chilly bins, skid lids and secret socks. All much better descriptions than anything the Brits could come up with

Ghosty, Mrs Plunk has it wrong....the amount of calcium in cows milk is more than the amount in formula (different brands have different amounts) - I have just checked. Cows is 120 mg per 100 ml; SMA Gold is 44 mg per 100 ml. Fat content is about the same (3.6 g per 100 ml in SMA Gold and 3.8 g in cows).

Sounds bizarre advice she's given you, as you say.

Tiktok... could it be that cow's mik calcium is not as well processed by the body than formula's calcium which would be added?
I ask this because the anti-milk people will tell you that this "Milk is good for you because it has loads of calcium" is rubbish as its form of calcium is not well absorbed by the body.
What do you think?

Never heard of it either, but didn't give ds cows milk till he was 2.5

He wouldn't eat well though so I kept him on 2 bottles of formula a day. I didn't find it a problem.

pupuce, I thought of that myself, but then thought that the formula calcium will still be basically cows milk calcium. AFAIK, calcium is not 'modified' in the preparation of formula to make it more usable. It's the protein they change.

I don't know why formula milk has more calcium than cows - maybe someone with more knowledge of nutrition than me can make a guess at this. I wonder if it is because formula milk is basically skimmed cows milk, and if the calcium is in the fat they take off....???

I am 99% sure that skim milk & full fat have exactly the same amount of Ca per 100 ml, so that wouldn't be it. It's fat-soluable vits you lose when they skim.

Hmmm ... I thought it was a bit suss ...
Love the name Mrs Plunk, Tiktok ... won't be able to look at her without thinking that now ...

Re. calcium and skimmed milk. I was always under the impression that skimmed milk had more calcium than full fat ... but I read things in funny places in the 'net , so I could be wrong ...

Anyway, I did give DS formula for longer than 12 months as he chundered on cows milk until he was quite big.

She also said that DD should be having 500mls of milk a day. I said, how can I tell that if she is still breastfed and she said ... wait for it ... that she should have 500mls ON TOP OF the BM ... so implying that BM wasn't as good quality as formula ...
I was a bit taken aback as usually Plunket Nurses are much more on the ball re. B/Fing than HVs in my experience ...
Luckily as DD is not my first child and I am a member of MUMSNET I took it all with a pinch of salt and nodded to her whilst thinking, "Just wait till I post this one on MN!!! Tee hee!!"
Besides all of that ... if I gave DD 500mls ... on top of her b/feeds she would go POP!!!

Blimey, that's a lot of milk, she won't have time to do anything else!
I thought teeth were already formed in the gums... hence the fact that a pregnant woman can take certain antibiotics and discolour their baby's teeth?
You don't think maybe she was drunk? Or an imposter?

teeth aren't fully formed in the gums before birth - see, for example www.dentalhealth.ie/dentalhealth/index.tmpl?secid=20020709225753&subid=20020821162740
The enamel coating is still developing as they come out too - but this sounds really daft advice. There is plenty of calcium in breast milk and she'll take as much as she wants. 500ml as a top up for one feed sounds ridiculous.

Message withdrawn

Secret socks are trainer socks, the ones that you can't see once your shoe is on

Skid lids are bicycle crash helmets and chilly bins are cool boxes.

Can you guess what Jandals are ... ?

Ghosty, I bf my ds till he about 4/5 months, and expressed to bottle for other people to do it! He was never that fussed about what he drank from either untill he tried a beaker and never looked back he didn't want the breast or a bottle from then on. I couldn't keep expressing milk to put in the beaker, i needed him for the let down reflex, so when he lost interest i found only expressing hard. And he didn't like formula, so after a month of him not having much milk at all i tried him on cows milk. He loved it! Told my health visitor and she said that so long as i supliment him with multi vitamins it was fine. So at six months he was on a pint of cows milk a day. He was also having small meals by then too, but it hasn't done him any harm, and at 3 he'll still drink milk now. But then formula is only modified cows milk anyway. I've never known anyone to talk about it in terms of how many teeth a child has.. I think someone has already said that surely the calcium is more about growth and bones, not just the pegs.

ghosty, dd2 is now 18 mths and only got her first tooth at 1 yr. she now has about 6, but she bites so i don't look that often

I think your PlunketPerson needs to have another little look at the guide book! She sounds scary! How can she say to give your poor dd that much on top of bf?!?! Does she actully have any idea of how much your dd is getting from you? Does she have any children of her own? If she does i bet they made swishing noises, when they moved around, when they were little!

LOL at swishing, pocket!

Stellamum - OMG what anti-biotics? Do you know??

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