Will she ever take more than 2.5oz in a bottle?

[NoTeaForMe]

My nearly 6 month old has been taking a bottle for a couple of weeks now. She has one bottle of expressed breastmilk a day but I'd like to up it to two as I'm keen to start cutting down on breastfeeding. The problem is she won't take more than 2.5oz, she has had 3oz if she was falling asleep on the bottle but it's rare. Will she be hungry if that's all she'll take? I thi k I might start weaning this weekend too. She's also teething so there's heaps going on, and with very little sleep I feel like I don't know what I'm doing at the moment.

Help!

What teat is on the bottle? If its a newborn or similar, it will be far too slow for her and will wear her out.

It is still a 0-3 month one, Tommee Tippee number one. But she doesn't get frustrated and rarely falls asleep in the bottle. Didnt even think about trying a faster teat to be honest! Whoops!

Definetly try a faster flow. Even if she isnt falling asleep.on the bottle, if she is finding it a challenge to get the milk out she will just not bother.

Ok. I have some of the vari-flow teats from when we manically tried anything and everything to get her to take a bottle! I'll give them a go. Thanks.

So I have her a bottle using a vari-flow teat this afternoon. She had 3.5oz (that's all I had expressed!) and then still a small ish breastfeed! I feel bad now, she's obviously been hungry.

The thing is even only taking 2.5oz she would still go 2-2.5 hours until being hungry again, which is about average for her.

Ahh glad it was a little more successful! Maybe she just has a naturally small appetite.

Mind, if she can start taking more, she may go 3/4 hours, which would be more usual for a six month old.

3oz is a normal volume for a breastfeed though. On average breastfed babies take about 25oz a day - it doesn't increase in volume as they get older like formula feeds do - so if she usually has 6-8 feeds a day each one is probably 3-4oz, if she feeds 10 times each is probably only 2.5oz. Her stomach won't have stretched to take 7oz feeds as a formula fed baby's has.

Why doesn't it increase as they get older? Surely they naturally have bigger appetites as they grow?

The fat content increases to meet the baby's needs, whereas formula is always the same whether the baby is 1 month or 1 year old.

So what happens if I move her onto formula now...which is the plan very soon.

In what way? It will probably take a bit of adjusting to go from small, frequent breastfeeds to a couple of big bottles of formula if that's what you mean. When DS moved from breast to cow's milk at 13 months he never drank more than about 3oz in one go.

Really? Ds is 5 1/2 months old and ebf until last week when we started giving him a few bits to play with since he started stealing them anyway from plates. We have just hot him to take a bottle on Saturday (still breast milk) since I go back to work soon and he is taking 8 oz per feed for 4 bottles per day plus 2 breast feeds first and last thing. Does this mean he is having way too much then?

If he's happy to take that much then I'm sure it's fine.

Well she just downed 5oz in one go. Think she would have happily had a bit more too. As its a vari-flow teat she does drink it quite quick, so she's not getting that comfort from sucking. Will they be alright at bedtime/through the night or will she down it but sto be awake and un-comforted?!

Thanks for your help so far!

Hettiene - have you got a link to any research about what you say regarding breastfed babies and volume of feeds?

I'm interested to read more as hope to increase the amount we express as DD gets older.

I think it was on the kellymom website.

We switched from breast to bottle when DD was 5 months (a month ago). When BF she fed every 2 hours, now she's on the bottle it's 3-4oz every 2.5hrs. The amount has increased since we made the switch as she was initially only taking 2-3oz. Unfortunately not going longer between feeds yet.

With regards to night feeds, she used to fall asleep on the boob. Probably a good thing in the long run, but she won't fall asleep on the bottle so some night feeds take 30mins, some take 1hr+ depending on how awake she is!

Allergy

Thanks Hettiene. I'll have a look.