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How did you transition from formula/BM to cow milk?
We still have a few weeks before we do this, but I've started to think about what this transition will look like. M is still really into nursing and his bottles at daycare. He gets 3 bottles at daycare, and he nurses 3 times a day. Do I just switch out his bottles of BM for sippies of cow milk at 1 year? Do I switch out one bottle at a time so it's more gradual? I have no clue how to do this.
Nursing is a whole other issue. Maybe things will change in the next 6 weeks, but I don't see any signs that he's ready to give it up. I don't mind doing the transition to cow milk during the day and keeping morning/evening nursing sessions for a while, but I need to set some sort of end point. I don't know how to do this.
And now for a bonus question: How did you transition to cow milk if your LO had a dairy intolerance as an infant? We still haven't given M any dairy. I was thinking of giving him a small amount of cheese or yogurt at 11 months, and then gradually increase it, to see if he can tolerate it before trying cow milk at 12 months. It seems cheese and yogurt are usually better tolerated, so I thought it would be easier to test it that way. Does this sound like a good idea? (I have successfully introduced dairy back into my diet and he's doing fine, hooray!)
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Re: How did you transition from formula/BM to cow milk?
DD had cow milk intolerance. At 9.5mo I reintroduced dairy to my diet and she did fine, I then tried giving her yogurt and cheeses and she did NOT do fine. I re-tried at 12.5mo (after her b-day party), and she did fine w/ them. I was still eBFing at that point and had a huge stash. After a month or so of cheeses/yogurt, I gave her some cow milk. I started very slow - 9:1 ratio of BM to cow milk, slowly increasing the ratio of cow milk to BM. I was still nursing 2x a day. At 14mo old I was about to run out of the stash and was nursing 1x a day by then (I was also 14 weeks pregnant so I wanted to stop nursing, there is no reason you can't continue if you both so wish). By then she was getting more and more cow milk in her straw cup than BM and at 14mo old I stopped nursing (the morning session was the last to go) and she was on 100% cow milk. Doing it very slowly worked for us!
Today is my 1st day not pumping and I'm not dying yet, but I am uncomfortable. DS is 12.5mo and shows no signs of ever wanting to quit nursing. I always thought I'd nurse my 2nd until he wanted to stop but honestly, I am so DONE with it, for many reasons. I hope not to pump anymore and then drop the before bed nursing next (he only nurses before bed and in the morning now), after a week or so of just nursing in the mornings, I hope to stop that too.
I find weaning to be harder than starting to nurse and that's saying a lot!
good luck, go slow and it's OK to keep nursing past a year if you want to!
So, I'm trying very hard to remember what we did and how we did it and it's kind of a blur. What I distinctly remember is fearing that it was a lot of changes all at once, but for us it just kind of came together. C had used sippies for water since 6 mo, so I just started sending one sippy with bm in place of one bottle and then upped it to both.
And weaning for us turned out to be pretty easy. I just offered a sippy instead of offering to nurse him. He had become increasingly distracted and busy, so less inclined to sit and nurse anyway. Don't get me wrong - there were definitely some thrown sippies and some awkward "Do I nurse him or keep pushing the cup??" moments during the transition, but in general, in all went easier than I thought.The first big switch was the morning session, because he's always been ravenous then so I figured he would be less likely to notice a change in milk receptacle.
As for milk intolerance issues - we started with hemp milk instead of cows milk, plus I had a lot of freezer stash to work through. Then tried cheese/yogurt and go the okay from pedi to try cow's milk.
What kind of symptoms did she have? I'm wondering what to look out for.
her whole face became splotchy red, especially around the mouth, almost immediately. But it can take a few days to show up.
We had finished BFing before 1 yr. so we transitioned from formula to cow's milk. Since you make formula in 2 oz. incremements, I ended up switching out 2 oz. of DD's formula for the day to milk in the first week, then upped 2 oz. per week for about 2 months until we finally switched all the way. I even split those 2 oz. over two bottles so that it wasn't a whole lot more for her stomach to handle all at once. T really had a hard time switching to cow's milk, so I slowed down to what she could handle. If M doesn't struggle with it, there's no reason to go quite so crazy slow with him. (And if he's doing ok with you on dairy now, he might have grown out of or be growing out of his intolerance already.) But I would definitely start the transition with something less than a full bottle all at once just to see how he does.
For T it was all about gas and trouble digesting the dairy (how I imagine an adult reaction to lactose intolerance) - none of the splotchy skin. It probably depends on the kid - I would look out for what problems M used to have before you cut out dairy from your own diet originally.
I can't speak to the dairy intolerance issue, but in terms of weaning, just take your time and do once nursing session at a time. Start with the one that would be easiest in terms of distraction--with DD#1 I think I started with a nursing that was during the day. As pps said, offer a sippy cup or a snack at the time when you would be nursing..if it's the morning session, get the LO up and give him breakfast right away. Wait 3 or 4 days before trying to drop another nursing session and just go from there. Don't be surprised/worried if he fights it some days or doesn't take much from the sippy cup/bottle. In most cases he'll adjust and make it up over time.
From my experience, the hardest one to drop is the before bed session...with DD#1 we finally stopped that session when she was 18 months old and that was the only nursing session we had been doing since about 15 months. With DD#2, we transitioned to cow's milk during the day between 11 and 12 months by switching out breast milk with regular milk in her bottles (and later sippy cups) and then we were down to just morning/overnight and bedtime at 12 months. We just dropped the morning/overnight session this past week. She's almost 17 months and I have no idea how or when we are going to drop the before bed nursing--she'll go to bed without it if I'm not around, but she definitely wants it if I'm there.... With DD#1 I just didn't offer it one night and she was pretty cranky, but by night 3, she was totally fine getting rocked for a little bit and then going to bed without a fuss. I'm not so sure that DD#2 will be that easy...but it may just be a matter of time. In your case--6 weeks is long time and if you take your time dropping sessions, it will probably be just fine.
GL!
For us, adding cow's milk to DS's diet ended up not really correlating to cutting out nursing sessions. I introduced whole milk in a straw sippy cup right after his twelve month well visit, and he loved it. Loving cow's milk didn't, however, diminish his interest in nursing. I kept thinking he'd slowly start nursing less on his own, but no such luck. Knowing that he would drink cow's milk did, however, make things a lot easier when I needed to be away from him because I could just leave food and a sippy cup with DH. When I came back, though, DS would be ready to nurse.
Weaning for us went more like this: Between twelve and eighteen months, I shifted to nursing only at home and then to only in the morning and at nap time. DS wasn't pleased about the transition. We had some tantrums and general grumpiness along the way, and I needed a lot of help from DH to help distract DS during the transition. The shift away from nursing on demand to two nursing sessions made a big difference for me, though, and at that point, I was content to keep going for a while. We just dropped the nap time nursing session about six weeks ago, and we dropped the morning nursing session a couple of weeks ago (at about twenty-five months). I was actually waffling on whether to force him to drop that one, but then, one morning, DH got up with DS while I was in the shower and just went with it when DS didn't ask to nurse. We decided to stick with it, and as long as DH is the one to get DS out of the crib, things are going pretty smoothly so far.
First - how did our little babies get to be so old?! I'm just starting the weaning process now and I just can't stop shaking my head in amazement that we're nearing the one-year mark.
We made an appt for a consultation with DD's doc in order to talk through food issues. I was nearing the end of my freezer stash (still have a whopping 3 bags left!) and I was getting less and less during pumping sessions. We tried milk in small doses in a sippy, but DD really didn't like it. The doc recommended trying formula so we did and DD loved it. I was shocked (and a little sad). Now I'm just weaning pump sessions (down to 2 at this point) and I nursed a lot less over the weekend. I'm planning to keep the morning and evening sessions, but that's it.
About 3 weeks ago, DD stopped showing interest in her evening nursing session, which was another indicator for me that she was ready to transition. She just wasn't interested and seemed full from daycare (she has 3 bottles plus a meal while she's there). This week I'm transitioning to sippys in addition to getting rid of the BM. Today she has two bottles and a sippy filled with BM. Tomorrow we'll do the same, but with some amt of formula, and then on Wednesday she'll have two sippys and one bottle, then Thursday three sippys. The good news is that she loves sippy cups and took formula from them fine all weekend.
After the birthday, we'll start cutting the amount of formula in the sippys and adding in whole milk. Who knows when we'll cut the last two nursing sessions. (I hope never! But I'm looking forward to wearing normal bras/camisoles!)