How Much Do I Feed My Baby?!
Once upon a time, women would just feed their babies throughout the day, as they carried their babies around everywhere. But of course, we have convenience (or inconvenience?) to count every mL.
A helpful hint… you should never need to feed your baby more than 5 oz at a time. This means you really dont need to ever buy the larger bottles unless you like it for storage! So then you just have to make sure you feed them enough times, and long enough to get a full feed in.
How does this work? A baby’s stomach grows a ton in the first month (from the size of a cherry to an apricot), and while it keeps growing after that, their little digestive systems eventually become more efficient at digesting milk in the next few months. They even start pooping way less (sometimes less than once a day, making it hard to predict!), since more is getting absorbed. At first, since they can’t digest yet, they are really just feeding the bacteria in their new microbiomes!
While it helps to know a MAXimum per feed, it is still nice to know the official limits in those first couple whirlwind months.
A Lactation Consultant gave me the measurements below to know how much to feed a baby, based on their current weight. It was handed to me as an old photocopy from 1997, and I turned it into the chart below. (Note: this is for breast feeding babies only).
After the first month, your baby’s digestion changes, and they’ll be able to drink the same amount, capping at about 32 oz per day (4 oz per feeding).
Your baby may cry for more, or keep drinking (esp if bottle fed, where their sucking reflex will keep going), but that doesn’t mean you should keep feeding them.
For Example, if your baby weighs 10 lbs, you’d want to feed them 27.5 oz in a day total. Then divide that number by 8 feedings (or whatever you plan to use) to know how many oz per feeding.
Thanks to breastfeeding-education.com, UC San Diego
A baby’s stomach grows pretty fast in the first month, starting out from the size of a cherry, to the size of an egg. But don’t let this fool you. The first few days, the baby hardly eats anything, but then your milk comes in. If you dont feed enough (every 2 hours START to START), you can start to feel engorged, or even lose your milk supply if you dont get on track in those first few weeks.
This means, you can mess up a little, especially in the first couple sleep deprived trial-by-fire days. But do yourself a favor and set up an in-home lactation consultation. It may be $350, but it is the best money you can spend if you want to make protect your milk supply for the next year or two. There are SO many nuances that can go wrong, but i also understand many people won’t be able to afford or access this information in time. The above and below are basically my notes that I had to come back to, time and time again until we finally figured it out.
Note: We had trouble breastfeeding, and had to use a nipple shield for 6 weeks. YIKES. (Meaning he wasn’t gaining enough weight bc the shield decreases flow, then we over compensated on the bottle and fed him too much. Since a newborn is all reflexes, they will keep sucking on a bottle until you take it away. At least on the nipple, they can regulate the flow). But we eventually figured it out, and now I am lucky to say we can breast feed on demand, and he is also great at taking a bottle. And mom knows how to use her pump, and hand her baby off to someone else if she needs!
Other rules of thought.
The amt to feed your baby depends on their weight at birth. Then the following calculation is used:
Babies have a natural off switch, but only if you breast feed. (Note… this post is in regard to breastfeeding only, which is measured very differently than formula. Breast milk is digested much faster and easier than formula, so you need different amounts).
Modern life does not lend easily to feeding a little human every 1-3 hours throughout the day. And when you do, you really don’t know how MUCH is being fed (unless you weigh before and after). Since we end up needing to pump and feed the little babe, it helps to know how much, and this changes based on the size of baby’s tummy (by age&weight).
It can be obvious that feeding enough is important, but It is lesser known the problems of OVERfeeding. If you dont make enough milk, there are lots of options to supplement, but here you still need to know by how much. And if you overfeed, you have the chance of overstretching baby’s stomach (causing a fussy baby, and increasing the number of their fat storing cells for life), and possibly causing blocked ducts in mom if you make sudden shifts in quantity (or miss a pump session).
Life is much easier when you let nature do its thing. But if we want to live in the modern world, we do have some hacks.
If you are past 12 weeks postpartum, your milk supply has most likely regulated and you can pump every 4 hours and still maintain your milk supply. Go slowly when stretching the time between pumping sessions to see if your milk supply decreases. Be careful when stretching out the time between pumping sessions and watch out for signs of clogged ducts.
The next thing to consider is if you are happy with the amount of milk that you are currently producing. A normal amount of milk to produce is anywhere between 24 ounces to 30 ounces during a 24 hour timeframe.
(Im about 120mlx 6-8x a day = 28 oz) perfect, at 3 weeks 4/26
After 12 weeks, when more regulted, you can test it out is to start by stretching out the pumping sessions every other day.
So for example, you would pump every 3 hours on:
Sunday
Tuesday
Thursday, and
Saturday
You would stretch the pumping sessions to every 4 hours on:
Monday,
Wednesday, and
Friday
If this goes ok, then the next week you can start to move your pumping sessions to every 4 hours every day of the week.
I surveyed 55 moms who exclusively pump and asked them when they moved from pumping every 3 hours to every 4 hours.
63% were 8 weeks or less postpartum when they started pumping every 4 hours.
23% waited until 4 months to stretch out their pumping sessions.
The remaining 14% waited longer than 4 months
So 8 weeks seemed to be fine for these moms
Weeks or Months PostpartumNumber of MomsBefore 4 weeks164 – 8 weeks178 -12 weeks04 months135 – 6 months77 – 8 months29 – 12 months0
Most lactation consultants will recommend one stretch at night that is 4 hours between pumping sessions while keeping the rest of the sessions every 3 hours.
After your milk supply has regulated around 12 weeks postpartum, pumping every 4 hours at night should not be a problem.
Milk production also requires you to get your rest. (Or at least as much rest as possible with a newborn.)
One nurse recommended to me that it was better for me to wake up on my own rather than to set an alarm and stick to a strict schedule at night.
One way I was able to get my pumping sessions in at work was to pump in the car while going to work around 7am. I would then pump at 11am around lunch time, and again at 3pm. Then, I’d pump again on the way home.
