Help settle a pointless debate between me & DH?

[taliac]

I am going away for work next month, leaving DH in charge of 9m old DD2 for a night. She is fully bf, weaned and eats well. I'll leave plenty of expressed milk.

This is the debate.

Should I be unavoidably delayed / the freezer explode / the milk turn inexplicably bad, what should DH do?? Bearing in mind we're talking 3 or so feeds.

a) Rush down the (possibly closed) shops to buy formula?

b) Give her cows milk?

c) Keep her going on water and food?

Would love your thoughts as otherwise the bickering will never end...

I'd say to put his mind at rest give a neighbour or your mum or someone some expressed milk to go in their freezer to be used as backup in the unlikely event of your freezer blowing up!

Any of those options would be fine - a healthy baby of 9 months who is otherwise breastfed is not going to come to any harm with any of them for 3 feeds.

The choice is down to convenience and preference.

So he can choose

Oooh, a plan d), I like your style IHeartIona! But what if they aren't in when the freezer explodes?? You have to consider these things you know.

I was advocating cows milk for exactly those reasons, tiktok and Starlight, plus he doesn't have to go out for it. But he got all "well the department of health says.." at me.

I didn't like to tell him that DD1 has been giving DD2 surreptitious sips of her bedtime (cows) milk for a while now..

no, the department of health xsays it shouldn't be given as a MAIN DRINK.
this wouldn't be a main drink, it would be a few feeds at most.

At 9m if weaning likelihood is she's already having bits of cows milk anyhow in the form of cheese, yoghurt, butter etc?

So the odd drink of cows milk isn't gonna harm her. We've been giving DS3 bits here and there since about then anyway to get him used to the transition later.

There is nothing wrong with cows milk for a baby over six months - it's as a main drink that it falls short, not because it is harmful per se, but because as a main drink it might fill a baby up and leave less room for other foods, as it is not a 'complete' food in itself. So over weeks and months, esp with a baby who is still fussy about solids (which your baby is not, you say) this is less than good nutrition. But for 3 feeds in an emergency, with a baby who will revert to her normal breastmilk afterwards - there's no worries whatsoever about it.

I agree that the way this is explained in the official literature is a bit lacking - you get parents thinking their baby will be harmed if a drop of it passes the infant lips before 12 mths.

Crazy.