Can he really be getting enough?!

[tory79]

Ds is 8.5 months, breastfed and. 2.5 months in to blw. Weaning is going ok, he eats a reasonable amount although not masses, but I can't help but be worried about how much he has lost interest in bf! Especially when I read people saying how many oz of formula a baby his age should still be having.

In the space of about 6 weeks he has gone from 5-7 daytime feeds and 2-4 nighttime to 3-5 daytime and 1-2 nighttime (not that I'm complaint about that!) but it seems a lot of feeds to drop very quickly. And he has always been a short feeder so these are only 5m or less with the exception of before bed and morning although these are still less than 10m. I do offer more feeds than this but he just grumbles and pulls away, and I do feed him before solids - he has 3 meals a day, no snacks as I don't want to risk him taking even less milk!

Also he hardly drinks any water so I just worry about fluid intake in general.

Can he really be getting enoughi milk with this nu
number of such short feeds? I read he's still supposed to be getting 20-25oz or something at present.

Thanks xx

Oh yes and I should add I had him weighed at 8m and he'd put on almost 3lb since we started weaning so no concerns in terms of weight! There are less wet nappies though I would say.

20oz is for formula, so you can disregard that.

I'd say 4-7 feeds a day sound normal for a breastfed 8 month old. IIRC mine was having 4-5 (morning, bedtime, before naps and around lunchtime) in the day and 1 in the night at that age, and he was neither feeding the most nor the least of other babies I knew.

Thanks rubirosa - I guess it's mayberry the fact that these feeds are so short that bothers me more than the actual overall number - that and the speed with which he's dropped them. On some days he might be feeding for a total of less than 30m which seems like nothing!

Mayberry? I think you can tell I am posting on my phone!

he must be getting more efficient.

i met a lady not long ago who said at 7months, her DD started finishing a feed in 10 minutes. He'll be okay because BF babies are good at self-regulating - he'd be the first to fuss if he wasn't getting enough.

I don't think he's ever fed for longer than about 15/20m even as a newborn - I religiously kept a record of feed lengths for a while as I was worried it meant something was wrong!

If he is gaining weight I'm sure he's fine as long as he is staying in his centile (or going above it) he is fine. If you are worried he is not getting enough fluid then try offering water inbetween times as well as meal times. They can take a while to get used to the taste of water. Ignore what bottle fed people say as its impossible to make a comparrison. Good luck!

If he's healthy and happy and gaining weight then he's getting enough.

He sounds like an efficient feeder - DD2 was like this, it's great :)

Are you offering him drinks in a cup now that he's on solids?

I would, especially in the warm weather.

DS was a super fast feeder too. As I expressed at work, I knew how much milk he was getting out when feeding direct though ! But this bore no resemblance to formula quantities, and it shouldn't as bm changes with time

Just keep offering drinks in cups - try a straw too - and share water from your glass with him too so he gets the idea that this is something good to do