Do I have an exceptionally greedy/hungry baby?!

[AintNobodyHereButUsChickens]

He's 12wks old and we're switching to formula from breastfeeding. I've been giving him one of those ready made bottles a day since Monday to get him used to FF. There's 7oz in them, he's polished them off each time and still been hungry so I've had to BF to top him up. I just made him an 8oz bottle, same again, he polished it off with ease and was still hungry Is this normal?! Surely he shouldn't need such big feeds at his age? He's not huge either, just under 13lbs and on the 25th centile. Am I going to end up making him pints of the stuff by the time he hits 4 months old?

Oh and why does the teat on the bottle keep inverting when he's feeding? It's the Tommee Tippee Closer To Nature bottles. A quick google said the anti colic valve should be on the top just under their nose when they feed, which should solve the issue but it hasn't.

He might need the teat made for older babies if he's inverting them?

How can a baby be greedy

Maybe the teat’s flow is too fast. Mine were BF but took bottles of expressed milk so I could work. I found if they had a fast flow teat they’d down the milk in a minute then cry. Because the sucking is also comfort for them so if the milk goes quickly that need isn’t satisfied.

I would agree, it’s likely the comfort of sucking they are missing. The faster flow through a teat will mean they polish off in record time. Also in this hot weather your breast milk will have a higher water content so it’s possible it’s thirst?

I had to go into hospital unexpectedly in an emergency (taken in in an ambulance with breathing problems) when my bf dc2 was 3 months old. We'd never formula fed dc1 at all nor dc2 up to that point so DH had no experience of formula feeding and 2 year old and an 8 month old to look after.

He went to the supermarket, and bought formula.

He made up an 8oz bottle following the instructions on the pack. Ds drained it. So he made another. Which ds also drained. Luckily he googled how much milk a 3 month old should drink at this point

I produce a lot of milk when breastfeeding, I think ds was used to drinking a lot!

DH struggled a bit to "ration" formula and also gave him bottles of water, but I pumped and threw away in hospital and was luckily able to go back to breastfeeding after 2 days.

I don't know how it would have worked out if he'd needed to switch to formula.

He was on the 99th centile for height and 75th for weight though, and still is 90th and 75th at 11 (years).

Rub the valve between your thumb and fore finger as it might be stuck shut

Because bottle milk comes out much faster than breast milk, babies don’t always recognise they are full when they are. When I express it can take ages to fill a bottle and my baby will down it in less than 30 seconds! I don’t know if perhaps you could so the bottle feeding down with lots of winding inbetween and then some rocking comforting afterwards?