Hi -

The accepted wisdom, of course, is to breastfeed your child as long as
possible, even up to four years of age.  For people with milk allergies in
the family, or suspected ones, this means the lactating mother has to keep
a completely dairy-free diet for this period.

But breastfeeding is not required for sound nutrition.  Formula-fed
babies typically switch to cow's milk at about 1 year of age.  SO here's
the scoop as I understand it.  I'm not a nuritionist nor an M.D., but I
do have some experience with toddlers who don't drink milk and no longer
breastfeed!

If the baby is under one year of age when you wean, your best bet is to
go with any baby formula your child can tolerate.  If your child cannot
tolerate baby formula of any kind, though, s/he can still survive infancy!
It's just going to be more challenging.

To accustom your child to the formula of choice, start adding it gradually,
in increasing quantity over a period of a couple of weeks, to expressed
breast milk.

If your child is over one year of age, then your needs are slightly different
and formula is NOT an issue.  Instead, you need to get into your child's
diet the mainstays that milk usually provides.
        calcium
        protein
        fat
Yup, those are the primariy ingredients that a child needs from milk!  In
addition, bear in mind that your child should stil be drinking plenty
of fluids (but NOT more than 4oz. of fruit juice a day) and the calcium
has to be absorbable.

In our house we couldn't stand the flavor of soy milk (although we do use
it for cooking) so we use enriched rice milk for drinking.  Rice Dream and
Westbrae are our favorite brands.  Rice milk is the ONLY fluid that our son
drank regularly from age one to 2.5.  He goes through a quart a day,
usually.

Protein and fat are easy.  Sardines, hot dogs, peanut butter, avocado ...
these are some favorite dairy-free foods.

Since he doesn't drink milk, we make sure that protein is an ingredient in
every meal he eats.  Fat has never been an issue for us, but if it is
for you, bread with dairy-free margerine is another option to add to meals.
Or teach him to dip his bread in flavored olive-oil, as the Italians do.

Good luck.
--Beth Kevles
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  http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic