(No more breast milk) What does baby drink after 1 year old? (vegan mom)

[germin8]

(I'll post this in the vegan section.) My DD has been on donated breast milk for many months and with supplies low we have supplemented with organic formula the last few days. I can't stand the smell of it... so artificial and "iron"-y. So, what will/should she drink when she's one? Do I have to resort to formula still? Most people recommend dairy milk - right? If so, what could I give as a substitute... oat milk? almond milk?

What do non-vegan mom's give their one to two year olds... is there a toddler formula or do they just have dairy milk?

[tzs]

we're non-vegan and i got pregnant and gave up on breastfeeding around a year. dd was mostly nursing to nap and bed at night by that point (so 3x day, not much intake) so i didn't really worry about formula (some say it's best to nurse or formula until 18 months.)

we do dairy milk but she's not that into it. when we can't do dairy i give either almond milk or that coconut milk drink (although oat or hemp might be better, i dunno.) she eats a ton of food and other dairy so i'm not all that concerned about the milk part. she prefers water anyway but i at least try to do milk with breakfast just because in spite of the fact that she can eat most adults under the table, she is still low-pecentile for weight, one reason being that she might be missing out on all that milk-fat that other kids gulp down all day.

[Knitting Mama]

We're going to stay on donated milk, because Cecilia's not a solids kid. If she ate a lot and was ready to have full meals, I's probably give her coconut or hemp milk, but I really think you have to decide it case by case.

[germin8]

Oh yes, my DD doesn't even eat solids yet. She just tastes here-and-there. Hmmmm, nursing only 3 times a day? That's pretty good... I hope my DD starts eating up those solids... that would really help. I didn't even think about hemp or coconut milk... they have a lot of good fat. I'll look into it, thanks.

[JessieJune]

You could always make your own formula. There are a lot of great recipes out there. Some are based on Coconut and Rice milk and others are based on raw or pasteurized cows milk. On a side note, one resource relating to food I found indispensable when my son was around 1 was the book Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron.

Jessi

[cristeen]

At a year, my guy was not eating enough solids to give up the formula. We ran out of donated milk around 7 mos, although we had enough to keep giving him some each day until past a year.

At 18 mos, he's still drinking a lot of (infant) formula. It's just been in the past week or so that he's started eating more and more solids and i'm seeing signs that weaning (daytime at least) is in our future. I chose not to switch to toddler formula after reading labels. The main difference between them being the addition of a lot of pure sugar.

If she is not eating a fair bit of solids, it is not nutritionally sound to give up the formula regardless of age. Although i'm guessing you're using soy formula, which is something i would not be comfortable with - i'd be doing everything i could to find more BM, but i know that gets harder as the baby gets older. Once she's eating a fair bit of solids, you can switch her to coconut milk, hemp or almond (in that order would be my preference - she needs the fat). Not the coconut milk drink, but the full fat coconut milk, we dilute 1:1 with water.

[mom2happy]

I made a batch of almond milk every other day. I was still nursing mine at this point, but was offering the almond milk to start changing it up.

If I couldnt breastfeed at 1 yr, I'd probably stay with an organic formula until the baby is getting everything from solids and water can be their only drink.

[SeattleRain]

Whatever you do, make sure it has a really high level of fat, even if you have to add oils to it. Babies need a lot of fat for development and I worry that vegetable milks don't have enough fat. Coconut milk would be a great option, but as another poster said, you'd be best off with REAL coconut milk, not the new stuff in the carton that is formulated to be  a lowfat milk substitute.