Am I overfeeding my FF baby?

[Lucinda15]

Hello! I am new to FF, and need s bit of advice. DD is 8 weeks tomorrow. She has been steady on the 91st percentile since birth, breastfed for first 3 weeks and now on formula.

While breastfeeding she fed round the clock, and seems to have kept that pattern with the formula. She seems to want a bottle every 2 hrs or so, only sometimes stretching to 3-4 hrly. At night she goes 6 hrs. I was worried she was feeding too often but because she was holding steady on her growth curve we were told not to worry, carry on as we are and all going well.

However. We have had a few issues with suspected dairy allergy. She was unhappy/constipated on standard formula so we switched to comfort. To cut a long story short, she developed allergy symptoms, was tried on nutramagin which she reacted badly too. We went back to comfort while we waited to be prescribed something else and the allergy symptoms eased. So consultants have said to continue for time being. However, she has started to vomit quite a bit. Not projectile, but more than posseting. And she has become very unhappy in the evenings but we figured this was colic.

The consultant today said he thinks the vomiting is due to overfeeding and has asked us to cut down the number of oz per feed to see if this helps the vomiting before we try another dairy free formula.

She currently takes about 4-5oz every 2-3 hours during the day (although more often it's closer to 2 hrly). At night she has probably one feed between 10-6am.

I have started to cut down her oz to about 3.5 but she seems quite unhappy about it. And while the vomiting has lessened a bit, she is still sicky after a feed.

I'm just not sure what is normal or not!

Has anyone had experience of feeding hungry babies as frequently as this? And how can I reduce a feed if it seems she wants it??

This was my daughter. It didn't matter how much or how little formula I offered she was still sick to some degree (and definitely a lot more than posseting) And if I'd given the amount of milk the doctor advised she would then be hungry again immediately after being sick.
Sadly I had to just get on with it, have Muslin cloths everywhere, accept that we were both going to have multiple outfit changes every day and tell myself that she will grow out of it!
As soon as she started on food she was much less sick. Now at 13 months it's rare for her to be sick at all.

We have a very hungry baby too - is fairly insatiable! He is 91st percentile for height and top of 75% percentile for weight. We're 10 weeks are take between 5-6 oz in a feed - which lasts 3-4 hrs. At night he goes 7 hrs.

Would it be worth staggering the food slightly? That's what we do, as we were concerned he was overeating on formula (we nomination feed). Would be insatiably hungry, drain the bottle, and then be a bit sick. So we give him part of the bottle, play/do some activities, and then give him the rest of the bottle.

Hope that helps.

Thank you both. We have been reducing the oz's for a few days now and I've also been trying to distract her to stretch the fime between feeds. I feel a bit mean, but I notice when We are out and about she tends to sleep/be distracted and can definitely go 3-4 hrly. When we are at home she seems to ask for milk more. I have tried staggering the feeds too, thanks for the tip. It does seem to help.

Anyway. So she has been doing 7 feeds a day between 3.5-4oz every 2.5 hrs on average (sometimes sooner/later). Her sickness has mostly improved, but I'm still unsure what is normal!

She is probably sick after around half the feeds every day. Mostly more like posetting once or twice pretty soon after a feed. But sometimes she can be sick 3-4 times quite some time after a feed, I.e. 45 mins-1.5 hrs later. It can seem more like posetting.

Rarely we get what I call a 'waterfall' - it's not projectile, but quite a large volume seems to just pour out of her mouth. this involves complete outfit change for her and usually top change for me if I'm holding her.

Because we are sort of basing a potential allergy on this sickness, im just not sure whether to take this as normal or as a sign of allergy. Im not due to see the consultant again for a few weeks although he said we could call. But he said to see how we go, and so far I'm not sure if this is normal or not!!

Is she distressed by the vomiting?

DS had reflux (cleared up itself at about 6/7 months) but it didn't really bother him. It was more of an issue for me than for him because I had to do so much frigging washing. Every feed used up about three muslin cloths and he chucked up regularly between meals. The lowest dose of ranitidine helped loads but it didn't completely stop the puking.

Funnily enough DS also ended up on comfort milk due to constipation.

Also, I think that you could now possibly get her onto a more regular feeding routine? I got DS onto a 3-hourly routine by about this age (one of great benefits of formula feeding). I never allowed him to get hungry - I just made sure he never went beyond three hours (except at night) without a feed and he quite quickly fell into a really predictable routine. It made life much easier and I was quite amazed by it - you could set your clock by him! Your baby sounds much bigger than mine, so maybe a two hourly routine would be better?