help with weaning to cow's milk

zapswife

Hey ladies..We've been working on adding milk to Delaney's formula bottles now for a few weeks, but she seems to really not like the taste of cow's milk straight. We haven't really pushed it too hard, but I wondered if any of you had any ideas.

She does use a sippy for water, but we're waiting to wean off formula in bottles until we've made the milk transition (but we can be flexible about that as well)

 

Thanks!

 

Seattle_JiLLn

Milk is like any "new food".. .it can take a while for them to like it.  It's not the same to them as breastmilk or formula. 

I think it was a few months before Ben actually would just want a cup of milk.  I just kept giving him sippies of milk, and eventually, he was good with it.

I've heard of putting a little bit of vanilla extract in with the milk to make it a little tastier too.  You could try that.

she's just barely one though - give it some time. 

Nancy_Drew

DD weaned herself from bottles 100% by 11 months.  Her BM bottles kept coming back from daycare full.  We switched to sippy's and she would drink. 

  We switched to whole milk during the day from BM by at first combining 1/3 whle milk to 2/3 BM. The next day was 1/2 and 1/2.  By the end of the first week, she didn't even notice the difference and was at 100% whole milk.  (We weaned night nursings about 2 weeks later and am nursings 1 month after that at just over 13 months)

Just keep up with the diluting and soon she should be OK with it! 

DAWNNA76

you may want to stop trying right now and just wait a little longer. Just cause she she just turned 1 doesnt mean that she has to be drinking milk right away! she will be fine if you wait a little longer and try aganin a month or so

Eli was 13 months when we made the switch from BM to milk. he hated the taste at first. I am assuming cause it didnt taste as sweet as mommy milk. So I added just a drop of vanilla extract to it and he srank it. then I slowly just added les and less flavor and he didnt notice after that.

energyzer

We also did mixed the cow's milk with formula/breastmilk, but did it over a month long period of time.  We started out with 1/4 cow's milk, then the next week switched to 1/2 cow's milk, then 3/4 cow's milk....you get the idea.  When we got to the end, he was drinking the cow's milk just fine, but not to the same extent he was drinking formula/BM before.  The ped thought it was fine because he ate yogurt and cheese which supplemented his dairy intake. 

 

Seattle_JiLLn

that's a good point.  They don't need to drink as much milk as they usually are drinking formula/BM at a year...  more like 16 oz a day... and that includes yogurt and cheese. Ben probably drinks 12 oz a day, plus yogurt and cheese.  He only goes through 1/2 gallon about every 5 days.