Switching to cow’s milk at 11.5 months

[Chirawehaha]

My (formula fed) baby is turning one on the 19th of June. I’m finishing up our formula. He eats three meals a day and gets three bottles.

I know we’re not meant to give cow’s milk as a drink until their first birthday, but do you think it makes a difference at this point (10 days)? I’ll obviously buy more formula if I need to, but do I actually need to?

Definitely swap to cows milk, 10 days won't make a difference

Yes he’ll be fine. Start adding a bit of cows milk into the formula to get him used to it, rather than doing an instant switch.

Thank you. I Googled it and there was stuff about the risk of intestinal bleeding and now I’m a bit worried. 😕

I agree with this. Make up a bit less formula and add some cows milk. You'll stretch the formula out a bit longer.

I mean, the WHO has recently updated recommendations to say babies can drink cows milk from 6 months, so I wouldn't worry about a few days (and I don't care what the WHO says, 6 months is too young for straight cows milk).
www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/healthreport/cows-milk-infant-formula-who-babies/103745814

By this age they are licking fluff off the carpet, so I really wouldn’t worry about giving cows milk a few days early.

I started the transition at 11 months as she was mostly breastfed. I found she took a lot more milk when we went onto cows milk

I would worry about it at all. Literally the only ones I worried about were honey and salt. When DS1 dropped his breastfeed at about 12mo he refused to drink milk for about a year. I was constantly trying to get yogurt and cheese into him. DS2 is the same age as your LO (he’s 1 next week too) and he just quit breastfeeding last week, hadn’t even thought to give him milk tbh as when my mum tried cows milk about a month ago (I was out) he wasn’t interested. But he has had milk on his cereal since he started weaning. He’s just finished my glass of water that sits by my bed (would rather have that than breastmilk 😢) so it may be worth trying milk again. My point is that I was so careful with DS1 and he wouldn’t drink it anyway (and is fine) so I’m not going to worry about giving it to DS2 10 days early.

I'd start making up the bottles partly with Cow's milk too.

Could you take this as an opportunity drop a bottle as well? At 12 months he only needs 400 mls/13.5 floz a day, dropping to 300 mls/10 floz when he's one.

How are you both getting on @Chirawehaha?

The main thing is to remember to start a multivit containing vitamin D, as cows milk doesn't have vitamin supplementation like formula.

For heavens sake, no, your baby's intestines will not start bleeding because you give him cows milk.

Heard it all now!

I actually asked the Dr as I was breast feeding and really struggling and she told me it was fine to swap over to cows milk at 11.5 months . She told me it was a guideline and general health etc were all relevant .

Sorry I didn't address this bit. Full Fat cow's milk is fine from 6 months on cereal and in cooking.

In fact it's not unheard of for BFing mothers to be advised that their BF baby can have the odd cup of Cow's Milk if they're away from Mum.

It's just not advised as their main drink. It doesn't say that they can't have it.

I really would t sorry at 11.5 months, although you might want to start by mixing formula and cow's milk at first and as others have said, once the amount of the amount of formula that they're having drops below 20 floz, you need to start giving a daily vitamin.