Eating enough?

[FutureHKmom]

How many times a day should a 3 month old eat? My three month old is mostly breastfed - though I give him either a bottle of EBM or a bottle of formula for his last feed at night around 10pm (5oz). He sleeps from the time of his last feed until 8 or 9am and then is fed on demand (usually every three hours or so) for the rest of the day. As a result, he only feeds about 5 times a day. He is peeing and pooing enough and also gaining weight appropriately. In this case, there is no need to worry that 5 meals a day is not enough, right? Because 5 meals a day seems very little. A few weeks back my little one used to wake up at 5 or 6 am for a feed, but now he is sleeping through that feed. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[Dink]

Sounds fine to me, as long as he's gaining weight then you shouldn't worry - he would let you know if he was hungry. At 3 months my little girl had 6 feeds most days but each baby's different and maybe your little boy can manage to take more at each feed.

 

[LLL_Sarah]

The only way to tell if your baby is getting enough milk is to look at the output. By three months you are looking for six wet nappies every 24 hours and a weight increase of about 110 to 140 grams a week.

By this age the thing which is most likely to determine how many feeds the baby has is the mother's breast capacity. That is how much milk the mother can hold in her breasts at any one time - this is the maximum amount of milk the baby can drink at one time.

If the mother has a large breast capacity then the baby tends to have a few large feeds (and usually the mother can pump a lot of milk at one sitting). Whereas if the mother has a small breast capacity the baby tends to have lots of smaller feeds. With both types of breast capacity the baby gets the same amount of milk.

Best wishes,
SARAH

 

[0ze_Kid]

Thanks for posting LLL_Sarah. Great advice. I just checked my bubs record and at 13 weeks she was having 6 BFs in 24 hours and 4-5 wet nappies