Our boy is just over 8 months old. He was fed on mixture of breast milk and formula due to wife not being able to produce that much milk and he was always fussy at the boob. Since 5 months he's been eating solid food, wouldn't take the boob any more but continued drinking formula. Problem is the formula is blooming expensive, and in my mind it's time we start to taper him off.
All the advise is to not give cows milk until they are 12 months, but this isn't because there's anything bad in it, it's because it isn't nutritionally complete like formula. My wondering is that if he has 4 bottles of formula (4*250ml) a day, and 3 square meals a day, he's basically overkilling on nutrients, and we could replace at least 2 formula bottles with cows milk.
His meals are something like this:
Breakfast: 1x Weetabix
Lunch: 2 green beans, 1 melty puff, 1 piece baby sweetcorn, blended cooked veg (mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes) with cous cous, 1 sliced nectarine, 1 small yoghurt
Supper: 2 florets broccoli, 1 melty puff some baked beans with a bit of mash potato and cheese, 1/2 mashed banana.
Wife is concerned he might miss out on some nutrients he needs but I can't stop thinking he's just peeing out lots of expensive excess nutrition, a bit like adults taking excess multivitamins - no problem with it but unnecessarily expensive.
If you google it you get the usual spectrum from "I heard my neighbours 10 month old developed stomach ulcers after having cows milk" to "my grandad was raised on a diet of raw cows milk and rocks and lived to 103".