Nigel has been drinking whole milk for the best month now and seems to be doing well with it...he is drinking it out of sippy cup at home and at the babysitters. You are not suppose to mix it with the formula in fact once you start the milk it just suppose to be that with no formula because it will mess up her stomach,
Our pediatrician told me to start giving her 2 oz. a day of whole milk at her 9 mo. appt. Granted, I chose not to, but as long as they are not annemic taking away formula is fine... that was the explanation I got.
As I think I told you, we have been giving her 6 oz. of whole milk for lunch... no bottle... since January. They tested her for annemia at her 1 year appt. to make sure that we could pull her totally off of formula and she passed. So, once we are done with the little bit of formula that is left we are going straight to whole milk. I don't see why you couldn't replace her lunch bottle with a sippy full of whole milk now... we did it a while ago with no issues :) Our kiddos are pretty resiliant.
Jem... I am under the impression that you are not supposed to mix formula with whole milk because you will be giving her double the calories. Formula and milk both have separate calories as opposed to the water that is normally mixed with forumla which has 0 calories. I would just give her straight whole milk... it took Leighton a few days to adjust to the switch, but it really wasn't a big deal or anything.
I started giving Jack whole milk about 4 weeks or so ago. I started with only a few ounces and have gone up from there. He will be 1 next Friday so I am thinking about switching out his morning formula with milk tomorrow which will only leave the night formula in play. I talked to his ped on his 9 month appointment about all this and she just said it was good to introduce gradually because it can be hard on their little systems but if you introduce whole milk before he turns 1 it shouldn't be a serious issue but of course wait as long as possible. I didn't want to do anything till he was at least 11 months. So right now I have 1/2 a can of formula left and I am not buying any more. If it would have happened to run out a week ago I would have made the complete switch. So far Jack has not experienced and adverse reactions to milk. He can be a little more tooty after his afternoon milk but not too bad.