I need reassurance!

[WinkyWinkola]

I've bf'd all my dcs for 2 years each. I've been lucky enough to bf easily with no issues.

Dc4. 10lbs 4ozs at birth. Lovely boy (of course!) but the most voracious feeder ever. He's only 5 weeks but he is relentless. Far hungrier than my other dcs.

I'm worried that as he gets bigger - 13lbs+ now - he's just not going to be full. I've never had supply issues but I'm as thin as a pin now - everyone keeps commenting on that - ANSI just wonder if I can actually sustain such a hungry child for six months!

I've never had bfing doubts before.

Well, of course you can.....but you need to look after yourself.

Does it help to know that breastfed babies don't actually increase the volume of milk they take each day after about a couple of months? The volume plateaus after that, so you don't need to make more milk as the baby grows?

I'll try and find a reference for that tomorrow :)

It's not quite the same with formula fed babies - they need to increase the amount of milk they take (though not by a huge amount) because they need the extra calories to digest the milk.

I have a 11 week old DS and he was 9lb8 born and was putting on nearly a pound a week in the early weeks so I was really worried about supply too! He is now about 14.5 I think and has thighs like Chris Hoy!

That's really interesting tiktok - I was wondering about leaving him with my mum or MIL and I usually leave around 100ml of expressed which takes me two days to get and I was thinking about when he needs much more and starting to panic that as he feeds every two hours I'd never express enough to get an afternoon to sleep run important errands.

Hats off to you for all your bf op - that's amazing - I'm only 11 weeks in on my first DC and its the hardest (but most rewarding) thing I've ever done!

Here's the references for breastfed babies' volume intake remaining (more or less) the same as they grow.

There is a good table in this publication - NUTRIENT ADEQUACY OF EXCLUSIVE BREASTFEEDING FOR THE TERM INFANT DURING THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF LIFE - you can Google it and get it as a PDF. It is published by WHO.

Go to chapter 2 "Human-milk intake during exclusive breastfeeding in the first year of life". Follow the line across for the mean volume intake of babies in their first six months. A couple of dozen studies, some of which go through to six months, show that on the whole, babies' volume intake either goes down a little, stays the same, or goes up only a relatively small amount. I think I overstated it when I said volume of milk intake plateaus - that is not the case overall - but it certainly does not increase pro-rata with the baby's weight. You don't need to worry that a baby of 20 pounds needs twice as much milk as a baby of 10 pounds.

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/09/15/peds.2011-0914 is a recent study showing the breastmilk intake in another sample of babies, where it increased between 15 weeks and 25 weeks (the ages are not significant - it was just the age the researchers measured it) but again not by a whole lot: 997 vs. 923 grams in a day.

There are physiolgical and biological reasons for this: the baby's metabolism changes and matures; the baby gains weight less quickly as he gets older; breastmilk composition changes a little.

Whatever - no one happily feeding a baby of 5 weeks (like the OP) need have any concerns that she will not be able to 'fill' him when he is older.

HTH

Brilliant. Thank you so much.