Fat babies?

[vict17]

Am I being silly? I posted a bit ago about transferring ds onto bottles. We've done this now successfully. What I'm now worried about is my 6 week old ds eating too much. He often has his 4 fl oz bottle and then half of another one. He usually feeds in the day every 2 hours, it suggests on the SMA tin they have 6 feeds in a 24 hour period but he has a lot more than that. Can I overfeed him? I read somewhere that babies make fat cells and then grow into fat adults? My dh is pretty sturdy too. Ds is 9lb 11oz at the moment, previous week he was 9lb 2,1/2oz. Is that a lot to gain in a week? I know I should ask hv but she was asking me if he slept through the night and I was too preoccupied by worrying that he should be doing that. Sorry if I sound dense

I wouldn't worry too much because the health visitor would have said something to you if she was concerned - they are usually very forthright about babies being over/under weight.

I bottle fed both my two (medication I have to take rules out bf).

With ds2, he was a real little piggy from about 4 weeks and was taking considerably more feeds than the stated average - I could hardly keep up with the bottle making (thought he'd have similar appetite to ds1 so had a big shock) This did settle down though when he got to about 9 weeks.

Anyone else? dh seems to think i should be aiming for what it says on the tin which would be a feed every 4 hours.

when we moved on to bottles with ds and now with dd we just fed them as much or as little as they wanted, not the number of feeds stated on the pack. it varied from a full bottle, to a couple of ounces later on, maybe half a bottle few hours later...never the same from one day to next.
they both feed from bottles in the same random, on demand way they breastfed. my health nurse says this is completly normal.
both kids are healthy weight, both thriving but not fat.

just give whatever feels right for your ds.

The guidelines on the tins/boxes are for fictitious 'average' babies. Some babies will need more and some will need less. In addition your baby will have growth spurts when they seem to do nothing but feed. I would go along with whatever your baby wants. It's way too early to be thinking about things like obesity.

My HV told me to take absolutely no notice of what it said on the tin and feed my baby what he needed, when he needed (and you would be very lucky if he was sleeping through the night so don't worry about that either)

Thanks everyone - I feel much happier now I thought the number of feeds on the tin was a bit ambitious as apparently in 2 weeks he should be down to just 5!!! I think I'm a bit paranoid about him getting too fat as I obsess about him getting bullied later on (I blame my parents for this obsession with weight - don't we all?!)

Have cut and pasted your wise words in an email to dh to put his mind at rest that we shouldn't be obsessing about routines and weight