Cows Milk before 1

[Kayzr]

I was recently told that DS2(11mo) can have cows milk before 1 as he gets plenty of vitamins from his food.

Just wondering if this was right because it means we can stop buying formula. With DS1 he had formula until he was 1 then we started giving him cows milk.

Thanks.

hmm - who told you this?

my gut instinct is to say no - it's 1 for a reason. I assume if he is eating that much he isn't having many bottles, so it won't kill you to buy another tin or two of formula and hold out till he is 1.

on the other hand if it is (eg) can he have one cup of cows' milk at nursery now and still have formula morning and night I might say yes.

A friend from MN. She has a prem baby and was told that she couldn't have cows milk until she was 1 unless she gave her vitamin drops. So she queried it and was told that term babies can have cows milk as soon as they start weaning as they get the vitamins from food.

He only has 3 6oz bottles a day, so it wont kill us.

sorry, tis bollocks that it's ok as a main drink from 6m - fine to use in cooking, on cereal etc but not instead of bf or formula until they are 12m.

Right ok. It's only just under a month anyway. I was just doing our shop on Tesco so wanted to check before I didn't put it on the list.

Thanks.

The 'milk as a drink' recommendation at a year is purely notional - it's not as if every baby wakes up aged a year and is 'ready' and every baby is not ready at a year minus a month. It's sensible as a national guideline, and easy to remember, but it is not essential for every individual baby.

It's a guideline for this country because it allows for the majority of babies to be well-established on solids by that time. There is nothing wrong with cows milk as a drink before a year, it's not actually harmful, but too much of it (ie as a drink rather than a mixer) means a baby not yet well-established on solids might fill up with it, and miss out on iron and some of the additional nourishment in formula (or, indeed, breastmilk). Some babies at eight, nine or 10 months are not yet having many solids, so avoiding cows milk as a drink allows for that. By a year, virtually all babies are having a wide range of solid foods, so, the logic goes, they will be fine with cows milk as a drink.

This is purely anecdotal but I gave both my DC's cows milk as their drinks around 11 months BUT they ate very very well. I mainly did it as formula cost so much and I hated ff anyway (I attempted to bf both but didn't get past 4 months).
HTH.