Cows Milk | When and How?

Up until your baby is one year old they should be drinking breast milk or formula. Cows milk does not have enough iron in it, so giving them cows milk as their main drink before this could leave them short of nutrients.

Once your little one is a year old she should be getting enough iron through her meals each day. Meaning you can begin to give her cows milk instead. You should always give her full fat milk as this includes vitamins that are not included in other milks like semi-skimmed or 1%.

How you begin to introduce the milk is entirely up to you. I would advise not going cold turkey on the formula to cows milk. If your little one doesn't love the cows milk you could be giving yourself more problems. I think slow and steady wins the race with this one. Giving them it in a soft spouted or lidded beaker is perfect but if your baby would still rather take it from the bottle and the teat then carry on until they are more eager for a different cup.

To ensure your baby is still getting enough nutrients from the milk it is advised that they should have a minimum of 350ml or 12oz of cow's milk per day. As and when they have these ounces is completely up to you.

So far we've been giving Logan one bottle of Cows Milk a day for the past week. It seem to be going well. We've replaced his 3pm bottle with Cows Milk. The first time he had it he only drank 3 ounces, but once he got a bit more comfortable with it he began consuming more and now he's drinking about 5 or 6oz's. Now that he's a bit more used to it I might swap out his 10am bottle for Cow's Milk.

With all that being said it is not necessary that you stop giving your baby formula milk all together. If you are breastfeeding it is recommended that you continue breastfeeding for as long as you can but there is no guidelines to tell you you must stop formula feeding after 1 year. There are nutritionists that believe that any animal milk (cows milk) does not give your little one enough nutrients and vitamins a formula milk does and the nutrients that it does give are harder for their little bodies to absorb.

So our plan for the foreseeable future is to keep Logan on two bottles of Cow's Milk in the afternoon but his morning and bedtime bottles will stay Formula until he naturally starts to drop them himself.

How and when did you introduce Cows Milk and did it work well for you?