When to Start Introducing Milk???

We introduced cow's milk at 10 months to my boys and by their 1st birthday they were drinking milk out of a sippy cup!

I started about 2-3 weeks before he turned 1, we did it gradually:
5 oz formula, 1 oz milk (2 weeks)
4 oz formula, 2 oz milk (1 week)
3 oz formula, 3 oz milk (1 week) etc....
This worked for our son, and it cut the chances of diarhea since you aren't doing it cold turkey.

Good Luck...

Stick with water. Unless you want to start gradually weaning her but even if you do she doesn't necessarily need cow's milk to replace the breastmilk. Nothing can do that. You just need to make sure that she gets enough calcium and fat and iron from other sources.

Doctors recommend waiting until around 12 months to introduce whole milk for a few reasons:
1. It's nutritionally inferior to breast milk and if your daughter is filling up on whole cow's milk she's not drinking as much breast milk.
2. Kids can develop allergies to it if they have it too early.

Basically the party line I've seen (and that I would stick with) is that the ONLY beverages that are appropriate for kids under age 12 months are breast milk (best) or formula (second best), and a small amount (no more than 1-3 oz or so) of water once they start eating some solids.

So I would wait until she's at least 11 months old before you even start. If she's interested in drinking from a cup, offer her some expressed breast milk (if you pump anyway) or water.

Doctors generally say try to start introducing it when they are 12 months old, but for my daughter I waited until she was about 11 months old....her docter said it was okay and it was easy to switch her because she liked the taste of milk SO much better than breast milk. Check with your doctor before you do anything, but personally I would try around 1 year.

I just asked my doctor this at my son's 9 month appointment. She said to completely switch at a year, but that I could start giving him milk here and there now. It has mostly to do with the low iron levels in milk and that calcium hinders the absorption of iron. Here's a link to a website that back that up:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002448.htm

My son nurses and drinks formula out of a cup, but he has had milk on occasion and has shown no negative side effects.

Good luck!

After my son's one year checkup his doctor said it was ok to start him on whole milk.

You can start introducing milk after one year. Before that children's digestive systems are not equipped to handle cow's milk and it can lead to a lot of digestive problems. but after that... go crazy!

Most doctors recommend waiting until the baby is 12 months old. Mostly because her stomach isn't mature enough to digest the cow milk and some of it can actually sit in the baby's stomach and give her food poisioning. If all you want to do is try to get her to drink something on her own, you could just try formula in a bottle/cup. Since you want to keep breastfeeding it shouldn't be too expensive to make her a bottle every now and then. Also since she's interested in you eating try offering her the mushy things, or tiny bits of what you have.

J.:

it sounds like you are doing a fabulous job.

the recommendation not to introduce cows milk until after 1 year actually has to do with the potential for internal bleeding.

that said... human beings do not NEED to drink cows milk. If you are looking for her to drink from a cup you can give her expressed breastmilk or water. water is sufficient for hydration.

P., RLC, IBCLC
Pres. Lactation Support Group, Inc
www.lactationsupportgroup.com

Generally 12 months is the time. You can give her yogurt or cheese before that though. and you could always give her water in a cup if you are looking to start working on drinking from a cup.

It's best to wait until 1 year of age. This is because cow's milk is inferior to human milk in many ways (it's for baby cows:)) but particularly in iron. So although you are not looking to replace breastmilk, if she is drinking milk she will drink less breastmilk because she is full of cow's milk.

BUT, it isn't an issue of milk allergies or inability to digest milk- remember that baby formula is made of cow's milk. So that's not something to be concerned about. It's just an issue of appropriate nutrition for the age, which cow's milk is not.

As other posters have said, you can pump and give breastmilk or water and she will get the cup experience without replacing breastmilk (Water won't fill her up the way milk will). Good luck and kudos for breastfeeding.