Weaning to cows milk

My DS is coming up a year old next week. I am still breastfeeding but am looking at starting weaning once he is 1.

DS has never had a bottle and uses a sippy cup for water which I will use for milk and use a drink bottle for water. He is currently having about 3 feeds a day, morning, lunch and before bed. Though the past few days he hasn't been feeding much but I think that is due to the snotty nose he has got so can't breathe properly. I am hoping to just got straight to cows milk and not use formula. Is this possible?? I will just go slowly with introducing milk as a drink to see if he has a reaction.

How have others gone about weaning? Can I avoid formula (unless he is allergic to milk)? How much milk does he need? He is a solid boy and a good eater.

My sister's children were weaned at 12 months and never had formula, they went straight to cows milk... I never had formula as a child either and I have turned out ok.
IMO if your child is having a nutrient rich and varied diet of solids there should be no need to supplement with formula. As far as I'm concerned the follow-on formula companies use 'scare/guilt' marketing to make us feel like we're bad parents and that we're not giving our children everything they need unless we buy their products.
Just do what works for you...

I haven't been through the weaning process but my sister slowly withdrew breastfeeds until she was only feeding before bed...then eventually dropped this one also.
Good luck! Hopefully someone here can give you some more practical tips for weaning...

I plan to keep feeding past 1 year but slowly introduce milk. Apparently they should be able to handle milk at 1yo but some children can't and so I figure at least if she can't have cows milk (I can't stomach it at all) then she'll still be getting something.

I've got a friend with a boy who went straight onto cows milk, not a problem as he had a wide varied diet. The little girl I look after is still on follow on formula because she is mostly vegetarian so she needs the added nutrients.

So if he's eating a good & varied diet with ample protein etc in it, he should be fine.

Both my kids went straight to cows milk and were fine, formula is no better, they just try and promote it to sound better when its not, and its bloody expensive.

As long as a child is having a good range of foods then cows milk is just fine.

Sheza wrote: Both my kids went straight to cows milk and were fine, formula is no better, they just try and promote it to sound better when its not, and its bloody expensive. As long as a child is having a good range of foods then cows milk is just fine.

Just want to say, formula does have more nutrients than cows milk (added iron, for one), so technically, it IS *better*, however, as Sheza says, if he is eating a good diet then he doesn't need those added extras, so cows milk is fine.

My girl is rapidly dropping BF of her own accord so at this stage I'll just let her self wean. If she's just choosing to drop BF, should I be offering cows milk instead? Or can I presume she thinks her diet is adequate seeing as she's dropping BF. She still has morning and night feeds.

My daughter had cows milk from 12 mths. She was on formula before that but she never had problems. I would introduce milk with one here and then do 2 a few days later and then you slowly drop the BF feeds. I know at night we did put about not even 1/2 teaspoon of milo in with the milk and that was easy to transfer to a cup and so we never used bottles from say 15 mths

Jude went straight to cows milk from breastmilk - he never had any formula. He eats a wide variety of good nutritious food, so did not need the extra nutrients.

We introduced cows milk very gradually, and gradually dropped breastfeeds which as someone else said meant no engorgement and sore breasts He was fully weaned onto cows milk by 15 months after starting around 13 months. He had also been having around 3 BF per day at that time. The last BF to go was the first morning one that he had before breakfast. The hardest one to switch was the before bed one but not super hard (DP now does the milk, book, bed routine instead of me ). Through the weaning process he just decided he didn't really want milk during the day, so the third milk feed he just cut out completely, though we did offer him cows milk to start off with.

He now only has milk before bed and sometimes when he wakes up (he used to have it every morning, this has only been in the last week or so that he has cut it out) - he never really preferred the cows milk to breastmilk (and fair enough too ), though the weaning was a fairly easy process seeing as we did it over a couple of months. But we make sure he gets lots of other dairy products during the day such as cheese and yoghurts etc and also have porridge made with milk and milk on it every morning, so I'm sure that all makes up for it. He is a very happy and healthy boy