Need help with transition to cow's milk please

[Jenna's Mum]

Hi, dd is 12.5 months old and I need to get her off the formula and onto cow's milk.  Here is her schedule at the moment:

7am wake and 8oz formula
9:30-11am nap
11:30 4oz formula
noon some solids
2-3or3:30pm nap
3:30 4oz formula
5pm dinner (could be anything from yogurt to porridge or veggies)
6:45pm 8oz formula
7-7:15pm bed

I am switching the 11:30 formula to cow's milk which she'll drink in a bottle but not from the sippy cup.  How do I make that transition to the sippy cup?  Do I just keep offering it in the sippy and hope that eventually if she's hungry enough she'll take it?  Then do I just do the same for all the other bottles gradually?  I'm also a little confused about what she should be eating and amounts, of solids that is.  Any advice is very welcome 

Thanks.

[MDHmommy]

Hi Jenna's Mom!

Our ped. says that at this age, LOs s/b drinking not more than 20 oz of milk a day.
What I did to transition LO now 13 mos to milk was to make his bottles 1/2 formula, 1/2 milk for a week, then I just switched them all to milk the next week.

During that time, I offered water or diluted juice in a cup with meals, and was sure to keep a sippy of water out and reachable by DS during playtime, walks, etc.

After the second week, when he was fully on milk, I took away the afternoon bottle, and replaced it with a cup of milk and a handful of snack of some sort (whole wheat crackers, healthy cookies, cheese, etc.)

I found that replacing that bottle with milk and a snack resulted in more snack, less milk, which got us to right about where we should be with milk consumption. I also found that he started eating more solids as that bottle was gone. From everything I've read, at this age, they should be eating three meals and 2 snacks, as their appetite indicates. (I just keep offering food until DS starts throwing it at the dog...) 

About a week later, I took away the AM bottle and replaced with water in a cup and a bit of fruit. Right around this time, we transitioned to one nap.

We still take an 8 oz bottle in the morning and one before bed, and I don't plan to change that as it's working. But we're off bottles during the day all together. All told it took about a month to make the transition, but we did it slowly and DS hardly noticed!

[Jenna's Mum]

Thanks ladies, for the last 4 days I've been doing a formula/milk mix but really just adding 1oz milk to a 4oz bottle so as not to change the composition of the formula.  Here's what our day looks like now:

7am wake and 4oz formula with 1oz milk
9:30-10:30am nap
11am snack of 4oz formula with 1oz milk and a cheese slice
noon lunch of whatever I can think of
1:30-3pm nap
3pm snack of 4oz formula with 1oz milk
5pm dinner of whatever I can muster up
6:30pm 4oz formula with 1oz milk

Tomorrow I think I'm going to change those 4oz formulas and 1oz milk to 2oz formula and 2oz milk, so I'll increase the snack to go with them.  After another 4 days or so I'll increase again until finally in about a week or so we should be on all milk for all bottles which will put us at 16oz milk per day... should I increase the night bottle to 6 or 8oz milk before bed?  If dd eats dinner at 5pm and then has a bottle of just milk before bed, will she be hungry in the night?  I'm very intimidated about the whole food transition, I need somebody to come and live in my house for about a month to get me over this food hump! 

Please let me know if I'm on the right track.  Also, when you say you give your lo's milk in a cup, do you mean a regular cup and not a sippy?  If so, do you just help them with it so they don't dump it all over because right now dd would just tip it over she's not used to a regular cup.  She doesn't use a spoon herself yet either, we've been a bit slow with the whole food thing I think because it scares me a little, I want to make sure she's getting everything she needs but she only ever wants to eat yogurt!

Thanks!

[MDHmommy]

Good morning!

I'd say you're on the right track. I understand your trepidation re: the transition, but honestly, at this point, if your DD has not had a reaction to the milk, I doubt that she will. You could probably just start giving her milk in her bottles and sippy cups and go buy yourself a new pair of shoes with the money you'll save on formula!
 

I can't speak for Stacy - but when I talk of cups, we use a sippy cup. Marshall never uses a bottle during the day, only cups.

To Stacy's point, you might want to consider making your DD's mealtimes more consistent with a grown person's - i.e. breakfast in the morning. Your DD is old enough to handle it, and it's one of the more important meals of the day.

Your routine might look like this:

7 wake 6 oz
8:30 breakfast, no milk
930 nap
1030/1045 sippy cup of milk + snack if hungry
noon lunch, no milk
130 nap
3 sippy cup of milk + snakc if hungry
5 dinner + milk if not close to 16 oz for day
630 6 oz

Above all, relax! If your DD does not have allergies or a weight gain problem, she's going to eat and drink as much as she wants to - and at this age it would be unusual for her to start waking at night from hunger - especially if you're offering plenty of food during the day! You'll be fine and so will she!

[Jenna's Mum]

Thanks this is great stuff!  I really appreciate the advice and especially your routines, it's a big help.  DD has a cold at the moment and in the last week she's had a couple of "runny" diapers... so not sure really if it's because she's swallowing more mucus, etc. (yuk) because of the cold or if it's the milk.  However, before transitioning to milk she was on full-fat milk yogurts with no problem, so hopefully it's not the milk causing the diapers. 

[MDHmommy]

An allergy to milk would cause a blow out of biblical proportion...or even blood in the stool. If she's had all that dairy, it's highly unlikely that it has anything to do with the cow's milk...but go slow if you feel more comfortable doing that.

Colds will screw up food, I've found...Marshall has a terrible runny nose right now and I can't get him to eat anything but fruit! But I'm that way when I don't feel well too.

Good luck!

[Jenna's Mum]

OK well that is good to know, but now I think we have a couple of things going on.  I probably should post this in the sleep forum, and the Getting Back on Track forum, and goodness knows where else but since I've started here I'll see if you ladies have any insight... dd is almost 13 months and we just got back (9 days ago) from a 12 day trip to the UK.  She never quite adjusted to the time difference while there, and now that we're back I think her body clock is still off a little.  She was quite short on sleep while we were there what with one thing and another, so now we're facing this little cold that she has, plus trying to get her more solids and less formula, and she's sleeping a lot.  She's been super-clingy the last couple of days too, literally clinging to my leg if I stand up and she's been crying in the evenings whatever I do... in the bath she cried, in her high chair she cried, so finally at 6:30pm I figured she must be super-tired and put her to bed.  She was out like a light.  So... do you think she could still be adjusting her body clock?  Also, this is prime time for separation anxiety isn't it?  I think I'm dealing with 2 or 3 things at once.  I decided to not focus too much on the food change while she gets over her cold and adjusts her sleep again.