formula or whole milk for daycare?

[CrunchyMamaB]

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this...

my son is about 11 months old and he's starting daycare on Monday. He's still breastfed, and I plan to keep nursing him until he self weans...but I can't pump enough to send breastmilk with him to daycare everyday.

At this age, is it better to send him with formula, homo milk, or none at all???

[just_lily]

Personally, I would use formula, at least for a while. My DD never took the breast (long sad story, no judgment please) so was on formula full time. We didn't start to introduce milk until after her first birthday and I didn't completely wean her off formula until she was 18 months old. I felt that until she ate a more balaced diet of solids she needed the more complete nutrition of formula over milk.

[redvlagrl]

It would depend on how long a day at daycare was. If it was one or two feedings, probably just go with whole milk. If it was a few, I would use formula.

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

Has your child had either yet? Because my (At the time) EBF 11 month old turned out to be allergic to dairy. Thank goodness we found out at home and not while he was at daycare.

Until hes about a year, I would go with Formula.

[CrunchyMamaB]

thanks everyone,
He'll be at the daycare from 7:30 till 3:30. I nurse him throughout the night, and then I'll nurse him when I pick him up and then again before bed....and he nurses at least twice throughout the night, sometimes three times.

I know he's not allergic to dairy because he's had lots of yogurt, cheese, and homo milk mixed in his cereal. I think we're going to try homo milk and see how it goes. He's a great eater so I'm not worried about him not getting nutrients, plus he nurses at least 6 times in a 24 hour period so I know he's getting lots of bm Who knows, maybe he doesn't even really need milk while he's there??

[mbm]

We introduced whole milk at that age for daycare. I sent breastmilk too for a couple of weeks while she was getting used to the whole milk. There were a few days where she refused the whole milk. If you have a freezer stash, maybe send some along just in case?

[hrsmom]

At that age, my dd would go for long stretches during the day without nursing, and it sounds like your LO nurses a lot at other times as well! Since you know dairy allergies are not an issue, I think your plan to send whole milk is fine.

[baglady]

Unfortunately, DS was FF after 7 months of almost exclusive BFing.

Personally, I didn't fully make the switch to whole milk until DS was eating full balanced meals and snacks. Once he started to want bottles more out of comfort than hunger, I moved him gradually to whole milk. Truthfully I fully expected him to be on formula until almost 2, but around 13 months he really started to chow down.

I think it really depends on how much milk. If he will have one bottle, whole milk is probably fine. I've been told that DS shouldn't get more than 18 ounces of whole milk per day because it's easy to fill up on and miss out on other foods. If he still gets most of his nutrition through nursing and will likely want multiple bottles, I would probably send formula.

Has he ever had formula? It doesn't taste like breastmilk. You might want to test it out before sending it if you're thinking of going that way.

[amma_mama]

I had issues and could not breast feed so DD was on formula. At 12 months, we switched to a combo of whole milk and "toddler formula". Since you are still breastfeeding several times per day/night, I think that whole milk would be fine, together with solids, while at daycare. If he prefers one over the other (whole milk versus formula), I would just go with whatever he likes to drink.

[shanniesue2]

It was at about 11 months that I stopped pumping at work and started sending raw goat's milk to daycare. I had changed jobs aand keeping enough milked pumped for him to have throughout the day was really becoming way stressful. I knew that if I could reduce some of the stress, then it would increase the likelihood of us continuing our nursing relationsship (we are still nursing at 2 years!). I also knew that he had a sensitivity to cow dairy, so we decided to test him on goat milk (he was fine when I drank goat milk, but not cow milk). He did fine on goat milk... and one nice thing is that we have a farm about 20 minutes from us where we can get fresh raw milk (which I believe to be way healthier than store-bought pastuerized/homo milk). It's nice b/c he has outgrown his cow dairy sensitivity, and we have switched him to raw cow's milk from the same farm (it costs about half as much as the goat milk).