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Infant feeding

Question about quantity of milk to give

6 replies

LillyofWinchester · 02/04/2013 08:23

Can someone explain how you work out what quantity of milk to give at each feed if you want to give some expressed breast milk? I'm confused as I'd thought it was based on the baby's weight but on Kellymom the calculator tool doesn't take weight into account, it just divides a certain amount by the number of feeds per day. Is there are difference between how much you'd give if it was formula & how much if breastmilk?

My baby is around 12 to 13lbs and is 12 weeks old

Thanks

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MyNameIsAnAnagram · 02/04/2013 09:32

Hi, if you are giving expressed bm it doesn't take into account weight, whereas formula does. this is because your bm changes as your baby grows so they don't need more, but obviously formula is the same all the time, so you need to give more as the baby grows. So yes, there will be a difference to how much you need to give in quantity from bm to formula.

I think gneral rule for BM is 1oz per hour plus a bit extra (can't remember how much extra though!)

HTH.

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AmandaCooper · 02/04/2013 10:32

So the huge bottle my friend was feeding her FF 5 month old is not representative of the amount I will need to express for ds when I go back to work? I have been worrying and thinking I will need to buy an industrial grade pump!

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LillyofWinchester · 02/04/2013 12:31

Ah ok, that makes sense, thanks. No industrial pump needed then!

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MyNameIsAnAnagram · 02/04/2013 14:16

Well, you might want to buy a double pump as it will be more efficient, I bought an ameda lacteline and the difference with what I got out of that and what I got from my tt single elecric pump was amazing.

I think I was leaving DS 2 x 4oz feeds when I went back at 7m, obviously it will depend how much they are eating etc as well.

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TheSkiingGardener · 02/04/2013 14:21

I feed DS 20ml, then burp, then repeat until he gets the dazed completely milked out look and isn't interested in more. At the moment thats just over 100ml every 3 hours, and then at some point he'll have a longer sleep or two as well. He's only 3 weeks though, but I did the same for DS1 and it worked for us. They both got/get through about 600ml a day for the first month, then very slightly more after that.