How much whole milk should a year old be drinking?!

[kutilputil]

my son has just turned a year and he has been breastfed from birth till now and is still feeding.however, i know i need to get lots of fat and calcium into him and need to give him whole milk.So far he gets about 150ml in his cereal and thats it and i cannot get into the habit of giving him milk on a daily basis.please can someone tell me how much milk he should be getting a day and what are the actual benefits apart from the ones i already know.also, how do i incorporate milk into his meals rather than give him a glass of it?thanks

You can cook rice pudding or custard for him. And of course cheese and yogurt are high in calcium and fat.

Is he thin, and needing to gain? Why are you concerned?

But how often does he breastfeed? That's the best milk for him anyway, and he's probably getting enough of it.

hi kutil

my dd is just 14 months and i kept her bf and dairy free till about 10 months.

then i gradually started her on yoghurts (big hit!) and whole milk on her cereal, in cooking etc. she'd been on rice milk previously.

since she turned one i have persevered with introducing a milk drink. this is partly because i am "encouraging" her to self wean so she is only having 2 maybe 3 bf per day these days. and tbh, that's less food than comfort!

anways, i struggled with a sippy cup as she'd never had a bottle and had no concept of tipping the cup! she has had water from a doidy since 4 months but that was just getting too time consuming!

she's had a straw closed cup thingy for water since September and I have now got a 2nd insulated one for her milk.

I give her 2/3 whole milk warmed up then cooled with 1/3 semi-skim. she sits on my knee and guzzles it then she goes for her morning nap.

we're still trying to get her to have regular afternoon milk. i have found an early lunch (11:30am) makes her want some milk about 3:30ish. She has her dinner at 5pm and is bf to sleep at 7pm.

I give her morning milk about an hour after her breakfast and it really sets her up for a nice sleep.

also, my mother makes dd a rice pudding every week and she now has lots of yoghurt and cheese etc.

don't forget, if it's calcium content you're after then broccoli and sweet potatoe are good sources.

if it's fat then mash with lashings of butter and whole milk is great. bread and butter pudding with the same might be good. pasta sauces with lovely cheese and spinach or cheese and salmon are popular here too.

HTH and good luck! My tip would be try a variety of vessels and persevere and maybe mix whole/semi and skim to see what your LO prefers.

hi, thankyou for the tips, yes he is slightly under weight but he has a healthy appetite so i dont worry too much, but i have seen that his nails and teeth have a distinct white mark on them and i have read somewhere that its a sign of calcium deficiency...or is it zinc?!anyway...i do want to wean him off bf slowly and he does need an alternative...its just i dont know what the quantity is....i read somewhere that it should be at least 280ml...which isnt so much really....help!

i thing you can get too hung up on what you read, i was the same when weaning onto solids.

that's a benefit to ff as at least you know what they're taking. my hv always advised that bf babies will take what they need in conjunction with a good healthy varied diet.

dd has always been a good eater and was only underweight when exc. bf - which always had me very insecure about the quality and quantity of my bm. she certainly was a frequent feeder!

can't advice on the white bits in fingernails altho i used to have the same as a child. and i used to skull a pint of milk and eat a huge chunk of cheese all the time. drove my mother mad - says it cost her a fortune!

i always managed to fall back to the evidence that dd was a happy contented little miss. the charts said she was under but then the charts are for ff babies so....

it won't harm him to have an increased fat diet. i never give low fat or skimp on fat with dd altho dm is always going on about how full of sugar yoghurts are!

i'd say boost the calcium rich foods, add the extra fat where you can and persevere with the milk drinks. personally i wouldn't resort to additives such as milk flavourings or even chocolate altho I know mums who have purely to try and boost weight.

you say he's a "little" under but has a good appetite so maybe it's just his build? my dd is very stout now and tall but so is her daddy! tall is good but stout isn't so great in her daddy LOL.

dd takes what she wants of everything and no amount of coaxing from me will get her to take more.

some days she eats heaps, others not so much. the same with milk - yesterday morning she wanted more but only had a few mouthfulls yesterday arvo.

go with your instincts and take your lead from him. as long as he's still eating it'll be okay i'm sure.