give one year old raw milk instead of pumped for bottle?

[honeysesame]

hi y'all,
my almost one year old has been taking a few ounces of pumped breastmilk 2-5 times a week while i'm working or at school, but it seems my milk is going down (at least for the pump-- i think she's still getting enough when she nurses) so i'm thinking about just having her take warmed raw milk at these times. what do you think? she and ds have no dairy allergies that i know of but occasionally i've wondered if it's contributed to various runny noses or digestive things. however in general they are both very healthy (knock wood). i'm also wondering if she would sleep more soundly if she had a bottle or some warm cereal (oats or rice) before bed-- i remember reading someone who had abottle of warm milk and banana before bed and wondering if that would be a good idea. so far she is just little bits of solids and core of nutrition breastmilk so i'm hesitant to make drastic changes-- i guess just thinking out loud about possibilities. thoughts/experiences? should i just keep trying to squeeze out milk for the pump?
thanks....

[Staciemao]

At this stage your LO could probably handle cow's milk, but human milk is still going to be way better for her. So unless you are just sick of pumping (which would be totally understandable) I would keep eking out those few ounces.

As far as the nighttime thing goes, I would offer her a nice full breastmilk meal, THEN the snack. We don't do bananas in our house, but some oats or rice with coconut oil or butter would go over well for my two. I would make sure she got a lot of breastmilk first because it's more calorically dense than cereal.

[Attached Mama]

I agree completely with the pp that pumping is best if you can do it.

Even tho breastmilk is higher in nutrients and calories than other foods, it's also more quickly digested than other foods. When our dd was about 18 mos we ended up giving her a good bedtime snack and then nursing her to sleep. Then around 4 AM we'd give her another quick snack in the dark - mashed banana or something - b4 nursing her back to sleep. If not she'd be up every half hour from 4 til about 10.

[darciedoodle]

We gave our daughter raw goat milk at 14 months for one of her afternoon bottles. And then after a couple months switched to a couple bottles a day of raw cow milk. And then when I weaned her at 26 months she stuck with raw cow milk all the time.

[guestmama9904]

mama milk is raw and warm so i would just stick with that before bed. 1 year olds aren't the greatest sleepers in general, at least my DS wasn't, and i don't tend to believe that stuffing babies with solids helps them sleep, there is no evidence of this that i have read or experienced.

what type of pump are you using? i actually found that i got the best results with hand-expressing milk with no breast pump or if i used the medela pis which is a lot more $ than the cost of my own two hands, lol.

[Ruthla]

Breastmilk is obviously the best thing, and I'd keep on pumping as much as you can.

However, if you're not able to pump quite enough for her, supplementing with plain raw milk (not a raw milk based formula) should be fine, since this is a supplement to breastmilk rather than her entire milk intake.

I'd probably have the caregiver offer the pumped breastmilk first, then a snack, and then only offer the cow or goat milk if she really wants "milk" and there's no ebm left.