Thursday, June 01, 2006

The anti-milk baby

Since Peanut reached 12 mos old I've been trying to introduce milk to her, the baby that eats everything. Everything it seems, but milk. I mean really everything: lemons, Indian food, olives, corn on the cob -- on the cob, and practically everything made from milk.

I thought she'd eventually warm up to it. But, after a few days when she was still letting it all pour out of her mouth, I started going through the bag of tricks:
  • heat the milk -> no
  • slightly heat the milk -> no
  • add favorite yogurt to milk -> no
  • add LOTS of favorite yogurt to milk resulting in yogurt smoothie -> no
  • give milk in sippy cup -> no
  • milk in straw cup -> no
  • milk in cup just like mama's -> no
  • soy milk! -> no
  • give milk while Peanut watches her favorite Nijntje video -> a few sips, but no
Next up are vanilla flavored soy milk and then, adding some chocolate to the milk.

In the meantime, Peanut gets cheese, cream cheese and yogurt at her meals to make up for all the milk she continues to refuse past her lips. The dr says most breastfed babies tend to protest for a while against milk that doesn't come from where breastfed babies think it should come from. And most will wean themselves entirely between 15 - 18 mos!

I never would have thought I'd be nursing Peanut this long though nowadays she only gets milk in the morning and evenings. She still is very interested at those times unlike at all the other feedings we easily dropped - she never once protested or tried to get mama-milk again during the day. I certainly don't mind the am & pm milks - they take all of 10 mins of my time, give me a chance to snuggle with Peanut and still work wonders in soothing her.

In the meantime, I keep trying to find ways to slip some milk into her - all suggestions welcome!

3 comments:

KC said...

Have you tried some different brands of milk?

HK said...

Pump...get her drinking breastmilk from cup. Then begin diluting the breastmilk with whole milk until its 100%.

Peanut's Mom said...

we're having great success with the vanilla-flavored soy milk -- and I switched milk brands (now we have Tom Thumb's Organic brand). Yesterday Peanut drank almost pure milk-milk with just a splash of vanilla-soy.

Today, I'll try to leave it out all together.