Cow's milk under one year - is it ever ok?

[KelaH]

Hi all

I have posted before that I am struggling to express enough at work to keep up with DD (nearly 10 months). I manage about 8 ozs a day, which combined with feeding her in the mornings and evenings, should be enough to meet her nutrional needs. However, she often needs to be fed to sleep, and so the milk I leave doesn't always last, and we have now run out of freezer stocks. My mother (who looks after her, ) thinks it should be ok to top her up with cow's milk.

Is this a total no-no? She will still be having enough bm to get the nutrition from, and she eats well, the cow's milk will only be 2-3ozs mixed with bm in order to make it up to enough to get her to sleep. I don't really want to introduce formula now just for those small amounts and only for 2 months.

Hi, my son had cows milk in small amounts from 10 months. I still BF him eveings and he's nearly 14 months now and quite happily drinks cows milk in the day. I never used formula - on the odd occasion I tried he just refused anyway! When my niece was small (she is 12 so not 50 years ago or anything!) the advice was from 9/10 months for cows milk. It's just, more than anything to stop people giving it instead of BM or formula.

I think the only issue with cows milk is it is too low in iron to be used for all the feeds rather than something intrinstically wrong with it.

Yes I agree - but if it's not used as main source then I see no issue. That is what i did.

We have given DS (12 months)cows milk as his feeds since about 8.5 - 9 months without any problems because he was starting to refuse formula (cant blame him really it tastes vile!) I have to say he does eat very well in terms of variety and nutrition etc though. I would say it shouldnt be a problem personally particularly since she is still having BM.

Claire

Cool, that all coincides pretty much with what I was thinking. One more thing though - my mother thinks that we should do what she used to do for me, and dilute the cows milk with water - worth doing or pointless?

pointless really as full fat cows milk is perfectly ok on its own without water added to it.

DD2 eats well, and I started to use cows milk at about 10.5 months. I stopped breastfeeding around then, and she was never very keen on formula - would drink much more when it was cows milk. My feeling was that I would rather she had organic fresh cows milk, than dried and rehydrated formula with god only knows what in (not bashing formula, but I am not very keen on the fact that it has undisclosed ingredients).

Pointless! They need the fat etc...

In the old days I think that mothers used to dilute boiled cows milk with water and add sugar and that was an approximation of breastmilk. I'm not saying it WAS, but just that it was considered more like bm, which is sweeter and diluter (ie; less salty) than cows milk. So that may be where your mother-in-law is coming from. I didn't give cows milk till a year old, but I did give cheese in cooked dishes, yoghurt, white sauce, custard etc so that's isn't really different to giving a bit to drink. I would have stuck to formula just to avoid having to make any calculations. It's actually quite convenient to have it all dried and at the ready unlike lugging cartons of milk from supermarket. And you can actually buy readymade in cartons but that is more expensive. I would be worried that cows milk was too salty. Am I wrong?

Sorry, not your mother-in-law, your mother.