Today was Baby J’s one-year appointment, though he’s actually one year and nine days old. He’s 29 1/2″ long, and his head circumference was good too (although I forgot to ask what it was). The only concerning thing is he hasn’t tripled his birth weight. In fact, he’s gone from the 50th percentile to the 20th in weight! Some of it could be that he’s an early walker, so he’s been very active and mobile. The doctor seemed surprised that he’s not really drinking whole milk yet, which I don’t understand. Baby J just turned a year, and I thought it wasn’t recommended before a year anyway? Maybe it’s just surprising to them that he’s still being breastfed at a year, considering America has atrocious breastfeeding rates? I’m supposed to get him to drink at least 24 oz. of whole milk a day from now on, plus more animal products (meat, yogurt, cheese). I’ve heard some people say they’ve put sugar or chocolate in milk to make babies want to drink it. Any other suggestions? He seems to just prefer breastmilk over cow’s milk, so how do I get him to change? I have decided to start weaning him now for a few different reasons, one of them being my upcoming two weeks of annual training for the Army Reserve.
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Just keep offering the whole milk, I wouldn’t add any sugar or chocolate as that isn’t really healthy. My daughter breastfed till she was just over 2 years old. I couldn’t get her to stop! lol
If you’re producing enough breast milk to pump, you can start pumping and mix a bit of cow’s milk into it and feed baby J that, gradually increasing the ratio of cow’s milk to breast milk every few days. I’ve heard a few people say they’ve had success with that, and it’s way better than putting sugar in the milk! Or just feed him dairy that he likes- yogurt, cheese, that sort of thing in the meantime, and he should eventually learn to like milk… or so they say. My toddler still doesn’t love milk, but she’ll drink it if she has to. My 11 month old refused to drink milk from 9 months until just a couple of weeks ago, when he suddenly decided that he wanted nothing else in the world BUT milk with his meals. Go figure.
We did the gradual mix where we gave her a little of that in a little of the breast milk at a time until she was used to it.