My daughter refuses to drink milk

Olga - posted on 07/20/2010

My daughter was similar. She is now 15 months. I am breastfeeding but she has not had a bottle or cup of milk since she was 12 months. She simply refuses. So now, in addition to breastfeeding night and morning before work, she simply drinks water from a cup. Fortunately she gets calcium other ways- yogurt, milk on cereal, etc. Doc says that as long as she is getting calcium by other means, not to worry.

Lisa - posted on 07/20/2010

Toddlers don't necessarily need milk - you just need to make sure that they get enough nutrients through other sources. Or you could try milk alternatives - rice milk, almond milk, soy milk, etc. All have different flavors and may be more palatable. Good luck!

Sarah-Anne - posted on 07/19/2010

it took me 3 months to get my daughter to drink straight whole milk. i started by slowly adding milk and removing formula (i dried up when she was 7 months and ran out of freezer stock of boob juice by 8 1/2 months). by the time i was to all whole milk, she refused to drink it. i ended up giving her skim milk and she was fine with that. for her it was a thickness issue. i now started slowly adding whole milk and removing skim milk. finally last month (15 months old) she was completely fine drinking whole milk. i knew she'd get the calcium from the skim milk, so that didn't worry me. she also loves cheese and yogurt. i was more worried about the fat content. she is really tiny (only 19 pounds). i asked the doctor about flavored milk, but he said that they usually contain more sugar than soda, so that basically cancels out any calcium she'd be getting,

Casie - posted on 07/18/2010

you could try buying strawberry milk or chocolate an mixing a little bit of that to the regular milk to give it a flavor..maybe she will take to it better if it has a flavor..my daughter is 16 months an loves the flavors

Holly Jo - posted on 07/18/2010

My daughter was the same way. This is what I did. Pump and mix your breastmilk with cow milk? Use 75% breastmilk 25% cow milk. Slowly decrease your breastmilk until she is drinking just cow's milk. I would stop giving her juice. It is not good for her and she might just want the juice, give her just water. She might start drinking milk again. Good Luck

Jennifer - posted on 07/17/2010

Yea she is completely weaned. I did try giving her bm in a bottle but she refused a bottle. I could never get her to drink out of one, so I tried a sippy cup and she would spit it out. I have even given her cereal with milk and she will spit the milk out with that but eat the cereal lol. She loves water and juice. I give her more water than juice though. Maybe I will try mixing it in with her water and see if she takes it that way. She has a checkup coming up and I'll see what her dr thinks. Thanks!

Renae - posted on 07/17/2010

Have you now completely stopped BFing? Often babies breastfed for that long need to be weaned on to milk by giving them expressed BM first and then mixing some normal milk into it. But if you have stopped completely that is not an option.

Will she drink water? Maybe you can do the same thing with water that they normally say to do with BM? Put a tiny bit of milk in her water, then after a few days put a tiny bit more. Transitioning from BM to normal milk usually takes 3 weeks of gradually adding more normal milk and less BM every few days. But I think going from water to milk would take longer, but maybe worth a try.

Will she drink a bottle? Yes I know most people want their babies off bottles by 1 year of age, but I think people get a bit too worked up about such things.

Perhaps there is a calcium supplement she can have? Maybe check with the pharmacy or family doctor?

Carisa - posted on 07/16/2010

My first daughter would only take warm milk from a bottle until she was about 3...I worried about her using a bottle for so long (she did drink water out of a cup), but her Dr. told me not to worry, a bottle is no worse for their teeth than a sippy cup.