Weaning a toddler.

May 26, 2019 8:00 AM

It's time to wean my healthy 1 year old baby, who's been breastfed on demand, was night-weaned around 9 months, and eats food well. Complication: I'm not sure what substance to bottle feed, and I feel sad/weird about weaning. Help?

Many people seem to wean their babies around 1 year and then offer a few bottles of cow's milk a day.

I can't really explain why, but I find the idea of huge volumes of cow's milk kind of distasteful. We love dairy foods, but I would never drink milk in large quantities; I have a vague handwavey feeling that it's packed with weird industrial growth hormones. Soy also feels *waves hands* estrogen-y. Formula feels "nutritious" to me, but it seems formula is usually also weaned at around age 1?

On top of these absolutely unscientific feelings, I also feel emotional about weaning. I've loved nursing Baby and don't actually WANT to wean. But I'm trying to get pregnant again asap, and my first pregnancy was utterly draining, so I want to conserve resources for Fetus.

I'd also like to help Baby learn to fall asleep alone at night and naps- currently he must be held/nursed to sleep, so switching to bottles seems like a good time to do that as well.

Can anyone help me think more clearly about my options here? Thanks.

posted by nouvelle-personne to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

We formula fed until my kids they were weaned around 1, at which point we switched to whole cow’s milk. My daughter drank gallons of it because she loves it, my son was quite happy with a bottle at bed time and water the rest of the time.

We buy good quality organic milk with no growth hormones, preferably grass fed, even better if local. It’s more expensive but worth it.

I also hate milk so it’s weird to see my kid(s) guzzle it down but they like plenty of things I don’t and vice versa, so I’ve never thought much more about it.
posted by lydhre at 8:10 AM on May 26, 2019 [8 favorites]

What about mixing the formula to the same caloric density as cow's milk? I too was/am not thrilled with the idea of giving my baby human milk meant for baby cows, but personally chose to keep nursing (no additional pregnancy desired here). Our very evidence-based pediatrician was 100% on board with the idea that there's no need for cow's milk per se, and that the recommendation to offer it is very much because so many people want to wean around a year. I sent human milk (for drinking out of a cup) to daycare for a long time, because they're legally obligated to offer some kind of milk and give cow's unless otherwise specified, but switched to rehydrated coconut milk eventually.
posted by teremala at 8:14 AM on May 26, 2019

I weaned my last child at two. She wanted her "night nurse" before bed, that went on for a while. She could speak plainly then and she wasn't ready to be weaned. Finally I went on a cruise for a week to finalize the ending. It was not unusual in my neighbor hood, or in my peer group to nurse that long. I was working the entire time. It was never a problem, and she was lactose intolerant. I had supplimented with soy based formula.

If you aren't ready to wean and your kid isn't ready, you don't have to. Go with your gut. Maybe family has something they are saying, but, it is your call.
posted by Oyéah at 8:18 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Our pediatrician saw no evidence that cow's milk was necessary, given my children's diet at the time. I weaned my son at 15 months, and my daughter self-weaned at 6 months and was formula fed. They both started solids at around 6 months and were great eaters at a year-to-15-months. They ate lots of full-fat, high calcium/low-sugar yogurt, cheeses, and lots of leafy green vegetables. Neither one of them really cared for cow's milk anyway, so not giving it to them seemed the best course of action in the end.

It seems like your night-time/nap time routine will be the real issue here. If he currently must be nursed/rocked to sleep, you should probably address that before you fully wean him or you might run into trouble. There are lots of resources out there for teaching a child to fall asleep on his/her own.

See what your pediatrician recommends, but if you're not ready to wean completely, there's no reason to. Breastfeeding isn't the super-birth-control that people think it is, especially if you're only nursing once or twice a day.
posted by cooker girl at 8:28 AM on May 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

After I weaned, I mostly gave my babies water to drink. They'd have like one cup of cow's milk pr day, if any. I felt uncomfortable with filling them up with cow's milk, and the doctor and "health nurse" (a nurse who visits until your child goes to a day care or school) both said it was fine.
I did use a lot of butter in their mashed veggies, though.
posted by mumimor at 8:36 AM on May 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

At a year, we fed the kids cows milk, but we sprung for the expensive organic whole kind. Now that they’re 6 and 8, we just get regular 2%. The 6 year old will have 2 cups or so per day, and the older one hasn’t drank any milk probably since he was 3. He switched himself to water, and hates milk (though he’s fine with cheese and other dairy). If you’re feeling unsure that you even want to wean, maybe extend breastfeeding for a little while longer?
posted by katypickle at 9:20 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Do you actually want to wean your baby, or do you feel like you ought to do it because many people do at that age? There's nothing wrong with continuing to breast-feed on occasion (especially if you feel sad about stopping).
posted by heatherlogan at 9:35 AM on May 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Ack, I realized that I missed the key point in your question that you want to get pregnant again and also conserve your strength for the pregnancy. I'm wondering if a happy medium might be cutting back on the nursing to a sort of token/comfort level? Cuddles with a pacifier might also be a happy substitute if your baby doesn't need non-human milk for nutritional reasons.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:42 AM on May 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

Many pediatricians recommend switching to sippy cups at 1 year and foregoing bottles completely. We did like others did, and gave organic whole milk, to skip some of the hormones etc. We gave milk at meals and water between meals, so it was in the neighborhood of 18-24 oz. of milk a day (our sippy cups held 6-8 oz). If they desperately wanted a bottle, they had a bottle with water in it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:03 AM on May 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

After a year, your baby doesn’t need cow milk, soy milk or formula of any kind - provided they eat solids well. My son couldn’t drink cow milk at all (allergy), and at a year I stopped pumping breast milk and he just ate solids at daycare, with a nut milk (usually cashew, almond or coconut) to drink in a sippy cup. I still breastfed him in the morning and evening at home, but mostly because he didn’t really take to solids until 15 months. We weaned totally at 18 months but I probably would have stopped sooner if he had been more into food. So, I would say just go whole hog into solid food.

For nighttime it seems like not a great idea to switch one crutch for another- I would just try to break the food to sleep association entirely vs having a nighttime bottle.
posted by permiechickie at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

When we weaned we didn’t really substitute anything - our son was drinking water for thirst, and food for hunger, so we just had to break his nursing to sleep habit.

My husband did a lot of bedtimes for a few weeks, he was already in daycare so napping with no bottle or nursing for them (we provided expressed milk initially but he wasn’t really interested so we stopped). I was pretty much just nursing when he got home from daycare as a re-bonding thing. Then I went away with work for three days, and that was that.
posted by tinkletown at 11:01 AM on May 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

I agree with many of the points raised above:

- you don’t have to wean just because others do/your child reached a certain age.

- if you do, there’s no need for a bottle. On the contrary, I actually gave my children water in (plastic) glasses instead of sippy cups as this is better for their mouth/lip muscles.

- where I live (Europe), the recommendation is actually give water as standard drink after age one (other than breastfeeding), and to not give more than approximately 300 ml/ (=1 1/3 cups) of dairy products per day (so that’s incl. yoghurt, cheese, etc.!) - and definitely organic/free of growth hormones, etc. The current recommendation is also to give full fat milk instead of skimmed milk.

- breaking the sleep association is probably a separate issue, I wouldn’t rely on weaning to solve two problems in one.

- how often per day are you nursing? When I weaned my kids, I took my time, with about 2-3 weeks between everytime I skipped an extra session going from four to zero sessions. No need to force anything.

- I had fertility issues with my first; my second was conceived by accident while I was still nursing my firstborn at 12 months. I’m positive that nursing actually helped getting pregnant, with all those hormones. In contrast, it took me several months to get pregnant with my third, more than a year after I had weaned my second.
posted by eierschnee at 11:13 AM on May 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Another vote for food and water. My kids never liked milk as a beverage much, so at right about a year they weaned from a combination of nursing and formula in bottles to water in cups. There didn’t seem to be any problem with it.
posted by LizardBreath at 7:25 AM on May 27, 2019

We went to formula in bottles until the kid could drink from a sippy cup ( 1 1/2 years?), and then gave cow's milk and juice. As long as he was growing and hitting cognitive milestones, our pediatrician said everything was good.
posted by JawnBigboote at 12:05 PM on May 28, 2019

Babies should be able to manage a sippy cup from much earlier than 18mo. More like 6mo I would have said.

If you want a specific recommendation, everyone in our baby group used this one. Or our son was definitely managing straws before he was a year old if you’d rather do that.
posted by tinkletown at 9:22 PM on June 22, 2019