How do I do this WCM thing?

dana316

I am going to introduce some WCM after Caroline's birthday, but I am so clueless about it. 

I assume I give it to her to replace nursing session as we are weaning?  If so, do I continue to give water with meals? 

How much milk should she get in each sippy?  Do I let her just keep it with her, or give her a certain amount of time to drink it, and if she doesn't throw it away? 

If all of that is totally wrong, how did you do it? 

I'm sorry if these are silly questions....but I'm totally unprepared for this whole WCM/weaning from the breast thing...

 

GypsyEsq

Our pedi wanted her drinking no more than 16 ounces of WCM a day but because we're still BFing she said to cut it to roughly half of that.  Which isn't a problem b/c basically DD doesn't drink more than 5 ounces of WCM a day.  What we do is give it to her in the morning after she wakes up for the day in an insulated straw cup. She will drink a bit while eating breakfast in her high chair and playing and then we put it in the fridge.  She has a straw cup available always with water.  But the milk we bring out with food - snacks or meals.  At the end of the day we toss whatever is left.  If we are gone from the house and she wants to nurse (which is infrequent) I offer the milk first.  Sometimes she'll take it and be fine, other times she becomes adament about wanting to nurse.  So we nurse.  We're basically down to morning, night and an ocassional day nursing session on the weekends. 

muppet.fan

We offer milk at meals and either milk or water at snacks. She also still nurses once at night before bed. She doesn't drink a ton of millk, but our pedi only recommends 12-16 ounces (plus other dairy) a day.

I'd guess she gets maybe 8-10 ounces a day (plus nursing once).

One thing the pedi said that helped is that it's rare for a toddler to drink as much milk from a cup at one sitting as they did from a bottle (formula/BM). So it's not unusual if they don't drink 6 ounces. Some do, but not mine! But at one, they're getting most of their nutrition from three meals a day and milk then becomes a drink, not their total nutrition like BM/formula was.