Need help...sorry it's long

Carlysearle · February 2014

Hi ladies,

I'm a first time mom and I've posted a few times on here. I tried BF with all my might. After 3 very unhappy weeks, sore nipples and baby losing weight I decided to exclusively pump instead of formula.

LO was drinking 3oz 8x a day in the beginning. At a month old Pediatrition said to increase to 4oz and we did and he was drinking 3.5 -4oz at a time but dropped to 7 times a day because he slept longer at night.

I feel like feeding has always been a challenge for us and he will just not drink 4oz sometimes which is fine but I can never tell if he is truely done drinking. Sometimes he will drink 2.5oz and then I will burp him and he will drink more. Sometimes he will just lie there with bottle in his mouth and not drink anything.

I feed him every 2.5-3hrs after he wakes in the morning. I can't understand how he can sleep 11hrs and barely drink 3oz. I don't know if I'm force feeding him.

I feel so overwhelmed and stressed when it comes to feeding him. I've tried different nipples and different bottles and it's the same. He is now 10weeks old and barely drinks 23oz but if I didn't continue to offer the bottle(usually an hour long to get him to finish the bottle) he would drink probably 18oz a day. I always put 4oz in the bottle incase he will drink all of it but it's very rare that he does.

I worry that now he is sleeping through the night that he is not drinking enough. Should I try formula to see if he drinks that better? Maybe he is rejecting my milk?

Ugh I'm so super stressed out by this!!

CLLDLL · February 2014

The average is 24-30oz of BM a day for a baby once they get to be a month or two old. So actually he's not that far off the 24oz amount. You might just have a higher fat content milk than the average. Or he could just not need as much as the average.

Is he gaining weight along his growth curve? Is he having 6-8 wet diapers a day and at least one poopy every day or two? Does he seem happy and have periods of being awake and alert during the day? IE he's not lethargic?

If the answer is yes to the above, I wouldn't worry. It's more about the growth and wet/poopy diapers than the size of the bottle, although you do want to stay near that 24oz mark for the day's total.

ETA: Wanted to add that at 12 weeks DS2 was only drinking 3.5oz. at a time. He went up to 4oz. shortly after that, and stayed there until he dropped a feeding somewhere around 9 months.

ktpaladino · February 2014

Well I'm not much help b/c I would have said and asked exactly what CLLDLL did. It sounds like you are on top of things and doing a great job. My nephew (who I watched several days a week) was the same way with never really wanting much milk and being a lazy eater, so I know how stressful it can be!