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Infant feeding

Help with formula amounts & times

4 replies

thingymaboob · 31/07/2018 21:43

I'm EBF my 6 month old. Since I started weaning a few weeks ago she has become less interested in breastmilk. I'd like to stop breastfeeding now but don't know how much formula to give her alongside food. Can anyone offer any advice, please? Any references? My HV is beyond useless and very vague! 🤯

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Windmyonlyfriend · 31/07/2018 22:17

Hi OP.
Your health visitor is probably being vague as a baby’s milk intake can really vary once they start weaning depending how much solid food they’re taking in. Some babies really only play with the food, others wolf it down.

With my daughter she loved her bottle and it took months to notice a real decrease in her milk intake. With my son he went straight on to three hefty solid meals a day and milk intake was minimal pretty quickly.

As a rule of thumb, a 6 month old baby would be having 6-8oz of milk roughly 5 times in 24hrs.

For reference, if it helps, at six months I’d make my daughter an 8oz bottle for each feed (sometimes she’d drink it all, others hardly any.)

A typical day might be a little like this:
8oz bottle at 7am (usually all drunk)
Solid breakfast at 9am
8oz bottle at 11am (may or may not drink it all.)
Solid lunch at 12.30
8oz bottle at 3pm
Solid dinner at 5pm
8oz bottle at 7pm
Night feed at 11pm
(Still having another bottle in the night at 6 months. Usually 6oz around 3am.)

As I said, I’d usually make 8oz but it really varied as to how much of that was actually drunk.

Hope that helps a little!

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Windmyonlyfriend · 31/07/2018 22:20

Just to say, sometimes it might be as little as 2oz of the 8oz that actually got drunk. My babies effectively ‘fed on demand’ with a bottle just as they did breastfeeding. Just because there’s 8oz in there didn’t mean they’d necessarily drink it all.

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thingymaboob · 08/08/2018 15:02

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Your routine is like mine, except I am breastfeeding. I have tried introducing a bottle but she's not taking it! She use to but now she's refusing. Argh.

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Windmyonlyfriend · 08/08/2018 19:30

Oh dear! I’ve had friends with that issue too. It’s really common. And frustrating! Just when you decide you’d like to stop the BF, your LO decides otherwise!

A tip I’ve heard is getting a relative or friend to try giving LO the bottle (and do it when you know they’re really hungry). If you do it they can smell the breast milk and will be more likely to refuse.
Make sure you’re not even in the room and see if that helps. Good luck!

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