After a struggle to establish breastfeeding, we're now exclusively FF our eight-week-old baby. She's always been quite a hungry baby and although she was born quite small she's shot up in weight. She had a tongue tie which was revised when she was a week old, but we struggled to get her to latch properly and so she's been having bottles only for the past three weeks or so.
The problem is I'm confused about how much she eats. The doctors advised me around 150ml/kg (she is 5.5kg) but sometimes she screams for more than this. We use the paced feeding technique to try and ensure she's not having too much too quickly, and we never force her to take more than she wants. But are we wrong to keep offering it to her if she's screaming for it but she's already had her daily allowance? We do try other things to soothe her - rocking, the sling, dummy and white noise, but it is definitely hunger.
I'm also confused as the midwife told me early on that you can't overfeed a baby and they'll just spit up or refuse what they don't need. But I'm not sure anymore than this is right?
She does have some mild reflux issues and I'm wondering if this could be a symptom of either the tongue tie or overfeeding, or whether she's feeding to comfort herself?
I'm beating myself up here because I know if we were breastfeeding we wouldn't have this issue, and there seems to be no support out there for bottle feeding.
As an indication, she was on 150ml/5oz feeds roughly every three hours, but she wouldn't always take all of this. Some days she'll snack and have 60/90ml at a time. But last night she wanted more and more and ended up having more than 200ml in one go - nothing else would calm her down.
Please can someone help!