Is it ok to switch my 10 month old over to milk now?

Question

She's already doing half milk and half formula.

Answer 1

hello...I'm a preschool teacher and i also studied early childhood education because i love babies...yes it is perfectly okay that you switch to milk...babies usually start solid foods around six months and that's when the doctors usually say its okay for them to have regular milk....just let your doctor know...also you can still give your baby formula if you like but its your choice...good luck

Answer 2

I would wait until 12 months to completely switch over. But you can start mixing some regular milk in with her formula now. Like 1/4 milk to 3/4 formula. Do that for 2 weeks. Then do 1/2 milk to 1/2 formula, do that for another 2 weeks. Then do 3/4 milk to 1/4 formula, another 2 weeks. then you can completely switch to whole milk. That will be at 11.5 months and that's close enough to 12 months. And it'll give you baby time to adjust to milk and eat more solids to compensate for the lack or nutrients that whole milk has.

Good luck....but don't rush it, you want her to be as healthy as she can be!!

Answer 3

Everyone says 12 months. Is there a reason you don't want to give the baby formula? She sounds fine with the half milk half formula. My daughter is almost 7 months old and I am thinking of giving her the "Next Step" formulas after she's 12 months old. That formula is from 9 months to 24. I don't see why babies should go from formula to cow's milk right away. I think the formula gives them what they need, I have a feeling my daughter won't want the "whole" milk in the beginning she's a picky eater! LOL

Answer 4

Yes, it's fine. Canadian babies get the go-ahead at nine months.

Clearly she has no problems with it if she's already drinking it, and waiting a year is a cultural thing, not an evidence-based recommendation.

There is NO proven advantage to formula over straight cow's milk, too. It was not that long ago that "formula" meant a homemade mixture of cow's milk, water, and sugar.


"Most babies eventually make the move from drinking breastmilk or formula to regular cow’s milk, but opinions vary on when this should happen. The Canadian Paediatric Society says it’s fine to introduce cow’s milk between nine and 12 months of age. However, in the US and some other countries, the official advice is to wait for at least a year. Why are the guidelines different from those in Canada?

“The main concern is about iron deficiency, and that problem starts in the early months of a baby’s life,” explains Robert Issenman, chief of paediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton. “When babies under six months or so are fed regular cow’s milk, they have minute amounts of blood loss in the GI tract. This blood loss makes them likely to become anemic. By nine months, drinking regular cow’s milk no longer causes this bleeding.”

Anemia develops most often when parents who are not breastfeeding find formula too expensive, so they buy ordinary milk for their young baby.

“A recommendation that babies not drink cow’s milk until they are a year old won’t change what those families are doing, so it won’t solve the problem of anemia,” Issenman says. The advice will be followed by those families who are already breastfeeding or giving formula until their babies are nine months old — and for those babies, it will not make any difference in the rates of anemia.

This recommendation does help in the US, Issenman notes, because a government program provides subsidized formula for a year for babies who are not breastfed. This can be important because the subsidy isn’t enough to purchase all the formula a baby needs, and parents sometimes give regular cow’s milk when the formula runs out.

Why don’t we have a similar program in Canada? “We have a different philosophy here,” says Issenman. “The concern has been that if we offer free or subsidized formula, it might persuade women not to breastfeed, or to wean early.” A 2004 study in Pediatrics did find that program families were less likely to breastfeed than families with similar low incomes who didn’t sign up. More than half of the formula sold in the US is distributed through the program."

http://www.todaysparent.com/baby/foodnutrition/article.jsp?content=20051006_153604_6200

Answer 5

All three of my babies were drinking milk from sippy cups by the end of their tenth month. This was with the pediatricians approval.

They were still nursing with their other foods at breakfast and then at bedtime for a while.

Make sure you give whole milk that has been pasteurized. They need all of the fat in it for brain development. I wouldn't switch to a lower fat milk until after 2 years of age.

Answer 6

My son stopped drinking formula when he was 10 months. He didn't like the formula anymore so I gave him milk and put vitamin supplements in his milk or in his juice. My doctor said it was fine. You can definitely switch your baby to regular milk. Just put vitamin supplements in her milk or juice so she gets all her vitamins and she doesn't become anemic. She will be fine.

Answer 7

Not until 12 months.

Answer 8

i switched my babes on the cow milk at 9 months aftyer i finished nursing....she is now a perfectly happy healthy 5 yr old

Answer 9

You should feed formula straight up to 1 st birthday, she needs those vitamins and nutrients!

Answer 10

Keep it at that until she is 12 months old. She needs the nurtition.