how much expressed bm to give 4.5m old?

[kipperroo]

Hi. Our DD will be 4.5 months in 2 weeks when I will also be returning to work full time. DD will go to nursery 8-1 then DH will have her til I come home at 6.30 ish. We've managed to get her to feeding every 2.5-3 hrs and she now takes a bottle from DH (still grumbles but drinks ebm from tommee tippee). At the moment I feed her every morning and evening and we bottle feed during the day. DD usually takes between 2 and 4oz. Is this enough for her age? What should she be drinking?
Any advice much appreciated. Thanks.

My b/g twins drank 20oz(girl) and 32oz(boy) of EBM every 24 hours at 4 months. That was divided between 5 feeds (girl) and 7 feeds (boy). The most they would ever drink in one go was 6oz.

So I don't think there is a clear answer about how much they need, but I believe breast fed babies prefer to drink less in one sitting than those formula fed.

It also depends on what the EBM is like. Mine was very watery first thing in the morning so they always wanted another bottle very soon after as I guess it was lower in calories maybe than milk expressed later in the day.

Did u feed on a schedule? Or on demand? We are trying to schedule to make it easier for nursery and DD.

Throughout bf'ing which has been 8.5 mths now, I have only ever produced 6 oz max and every feed is roughly 4oz which is 3-4 daily.

When I returned to work I would always make up 4oz bottles and 2oz bottles just in case she became hungry again soon after and needed another little top up (EBM), because as said previously bf don't take in the large quantities that ff babies do. This also meant that if she did become hungry and wanted a top up, another 4oz bottle wasn't wasted if she only had a little bit - my EBM is like gold dust to me and very precious so I don't like it being wasted!!

Hope this helps.

I offer her 1oz per hr, so 3 hours between feeds she gets a 3oz bottle. If shes cries for more, then she is offered more and this stops her drinking it, just because it's there. This way I can pump a sustainable amount during my work day, but maybe she catches up in the night.

Average amounts are 25oz per 24hrs, say if she has 8 meals a day that would be roughly 3oz per feed. Typical range is 19-30oz.

This doesn't change with age (from 6 weeks) until weaning when it (hopefully) slowly decreases

I can only offer today's experience, which was that DD (17 weeks) happily took 6 oz from DH and wasn't wanting food again for 3 hours. I did the same as thealicesmum. I'd expressed 4 oz this morning so she had that, then she wanted more so DH defrosted two 1 oz bags from the (v limited) freezer store.

By food I mean milk (realising this could be construed as DD already being on 3 square meals a day).

Thanks all. This is very helpful.