Babies: 3 - 6 Months

Amount of food at home vs. babysitter

Our little guy is FF. Our babysitter logs the times and amounts of his feedings and we notice a difference in how he eats with her vs. how he eats with us.

When he's at home, he usually eats 5 oz. every 4 hours. But we've noticed when he is with her, he's only eating 3 or 4 oz. in a sitting, but the feedings are still 4 hours or more apart. The other day his chart only showed 3 feedings from 7:30 am until 5:30 pm at 3 oz, 3 oz. and 2 oz. As a result he was ravenous when he got home and ended up eating a whopping 14 oz. of formula between 5:30 and 10:00 pm.

Have any of you noticed a difference in your LOs eating patterns from your house to your daycare/babysitter's? I've asked our sitter why the low numbers, but she just says that "that's all he'll take then he falls asleep." Even when my son is dog tired he still eats the whole 6 oz. he gets right before bedtime, so I'm not sure what to think.

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

Re: Amount of food at home vs. babysitter

  • Thanks ladies! Just sometimes it bothers me - like yesterday he only ate 12 oz from the time I dropped him off at 7:30 am until 6:00 pm. He's usually had about 18-24 by that time. I guess whatever, as long as he's fat and happy.

     

     

     

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  • Same here! At home my guy will polish off 5-6 oz every 3-4 hrs and at daycare he mostly snacks, sometimes eating only 1-2 oz but usually more frequently! He still ends up eating about the same amount each day though and seems happy so I've been going with it.
  • He might just be too distracted at the babysitter's to eat.  Our boys are bottle-fed EBM during the day and FF at night.  Recently, C stopped finishing his bottles during the day and he was getting up more at night to eat.  I read somewhere that at 4 months babies become more aware of the world around them, and so may be more easily distracted from eating.  We now try to minimize the goofing around and chatter during C's feedings, which has helped him finish his bottles. 

    Maybe for your LO, the babysitter's environment is too interesting to focus on eating and once he's home in his familiar environment, he's settles down enough to notice his hunger.  Maybe the babysitter can quiet things down during his feedings.  Of course, if he's gaining properly, there's no big deal, it's just that not eating enough during the day can mess up his ability to sleep without a MOTN feeding. 

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  • I don't worry about a babysitter, since I have a 14 year old daughter and I think she's old enough to watch her baby brother while me and DH aren't home. (Which is never more than about 60-90 minutes anyway.) My guess is that your baby is less comfortable at the babysitter's than they are at home, and this lack of comfort may affect the baby's feeding patterns. IDK-just a guess.
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