Too much cow's milk?

[Lou1234]

Hi.

My daughter will be 17 months old soon. She has a varied diet and eats three meals a day and two snacks. Her evening meal is at around 5.45.

She does baby signing and normally asks for milk at around 7.30. The bottle is a full bottle so 260ml (around 8oz). After that bottle we read books and stuff. She then asks for more milk at around 8 and will sometimes have another 150ml (5oz) or even more.

She pretty much doesn't have a morning bottle anymore and will sign for food instead of milk. If she does sign for milk in the morning I give it to her.

Is she having too much? I have tried to move to a beaker for the milk but she just refuses to drink it. I know ideally she should be moving away from bottles. There are no weight issues with her - she sits just under the 50th percentile.

 

[MindUtopia]

I'd say that sounds about perfect. Toddlers should have up to about a pint of milk a day (500 ml). My daughter is the same age is yours and she has about 210-250 ml of milk before bed. She sometimes has more throughout the day as part of her snack (esp at nursery, they do snack and a cup of milk) or she'll have milk in porridge/cereal or yogurt, which comes out to be roughly the same amount of milk. I think they really should have 1-2 cups of milk a day until probably 5+ so I'd say you're right on target. As for switching from bottles, try a straw cup. That works great for us. We use the Moma straw cups, which are non-spill, and makes for much less mess than a free flow sippy. I was doubtful my daughter would be okay trying it instead of a bottle but she took to it the first day and we've never looked back.

 

[Lou1234]

Thank you so much for your post - that has put my mind at rest a bit.

LO also has milk at nursery with her mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack but that is just two days a week. She also has cheese and yogurt in her diet.

I will give the straw cup a go. Probably not tonight or tomorrow as these are nursery days and she comes home tired and is fairly grumpy in the evening. Not a day to be trying new things!