Ideas for transition to regular milk
Our daughter just turned 1 and we were given the go-ahead to transition her to whole milk. She was originally nursed and then transitioned to lactose-free cow-based formula around 5 months without any problems. We tried regular formula a few times but they seemed to give her stomach issues so we went back to the "sensitive" formula.
We have tried waming it up in the bottle the same way we do with the formula at her set schedule, and she refused to have any of it both times. During those times she was not given anything else to drink. We have also tried giving it to her cold in the bottle. Same thing.
At meals she gets a sippy cup with water or formula so we have tried giving her milk in sippy cups which she won't really drink either.
We have tried 2 different brands of organic milk, as well as adding heavy cream (I heard that formula is very fatty, and we used to do this for our son when he had to get more calories).
This is really surprising since she loves to eat and loves cheese. So far we are just pouring a lot of leftover milk down the drain. Any ideas?
4 Answers
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Does she like cereal? Maybe add some regular milk to her cherrios and see what she thinks. Our 19mos old son likes his milk "nice and warm" which means about 30 seconds in the microwave (in a microwave safe pitcher then poured into his bottle). I remember that his formula was vanilla flavored. You could try adding a little of the formula to a larger amount of the milk and slowly lessen the amount of formula/flavor.
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Our son just turned 1 as well. He didn't like the direct transition to whole milk, so we tried 2 oz. of milk and 3 oz. of formula mixed and it worked. This past weekend we switched to 3 oz. milk and 2 oz. formula. This weekend we will move to 4 oz. milk and 1 oz. formula and see how it goes. We did the same thing when we transitioned from breast-milk to formula and it worked smoothly. Slow but steady transition seems to work for us. Hope it helps you too!
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Have you tried yogurt? When I was little I was able to eat yogurt and cheese but not regular milk - I'm told it gave me stomach problems. As I'm sure you know, there's no real dietary need to be drinking cow's milk, but it would be good to figure out if this is just a temporary issue or actually a problem with milk. Things that are like milk, but easier on the stomach (perhaps): yogurt, lactose-free milk, soymilk.
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As obiwantobi suggested, have you tried mixing the formula and milk gradually increasing the ratio over the span of several days or weeks?
Thanks to all the suggestions! I'm posting what worked in case it helps others. Our 1 year old is 14 months now and has been drinking whole milk warmed to almost room temp for about 5 weeks now. What seemed to help most was getting it to just the right temperature that she likes (slightly cold).
We did try mixing milk with formula and that didn't help. So what we did was give her whole milk for the first 2 bottles of the day. If she did not drink it, she would get other food but not formula. After the first 2 bottles (she was getting 4 a day), she would get formula in the next bottles. On the 3rd day, she drank the first bottle but not the 2nd so we went back to formula that day. On the next day, she drank both bottles and we have been giving her whole milk ever since.
- sweethi, Jan 18, 2011