Why no cow's milk until 1 year old?

[susan_1981]

My son is 10.5 months old and drinks about 4 7oz bottles of formula a day. I really want to down this to two bottles of formula and one or two bottles of ordinary full fat cow's milk a day but I was just wondering why they say no cows milk (apart from in food) until they are 1? I know he isn't going to wake up on his first birthday and all of a sudden be ready over night for cows milk but I just wondered why they say this? Is it to do with allergies or is it to do with nutrients?

Money is so tight at the moment. I've just gone back to work but only work two days and it would save me so much money to be able to cut down on the formula but obviously don't want to do this if it's for health reasons. So is it just because of the iron content in formula that they should have this or is there another reason?

 

[MindUtopia]

It's partly to do with the nutrients and the fat/protein content in cow's milk (it's not as similar to breastmilk as formula, so it's not as ideal for small babies). I've also heard that cow's milk has more salt than formula (though formula has more sugar, so that's not always great either). I think you could start to think about adding in small amounts of milk now, but I wouldn't switch entirely to cow's milk just yet. But I don't think there's any harm in starting to introduce it as long as formula is still the majority of what he gets until closer to 1. We started at 10.5 months adding a bit of cow's milk to one bottle, and then did a whole bottle of cow's milk once a day by about 11 months, etc. until we switched to cow's milk completely at a year.

 

[susan_1981]

Thank you. This is definitely what I wanted to hear. I'm still going to give him formula until he is one but maybe just switch one or two bottles to cows milk during the day (if he likes it). Will give it a go next week and see how he gets on x

 

[Mummafrog]

I would also suggest it has something to do with the high level of foreign hormones in another animals milk which aren't good for us, let alone littlies. (I drink looads of cows milk btw ) Maybe they can't process them as well before a year. X

 

[halullat]

We were told in our weaning talk that it is lacking in several vitamins x

 

[Alyssa Drough]

I thought it was something to do with certain proteins that babies find difficult to digest. My gp has said to give my dd a dairy free diet for a while (except for her regular formula) because I let her try some yoghurt and she's had really bad diarrhoea and nappy rash since.