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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

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Original poster

How much formula - conflicting advice

10 replies

boompi · 05/12/2007 10:58

DS is 18 weeks old and weighs nearly 20 pounds!
HV says feed for his age not weightbut he is still waking 2-3 x at night and he thinks hes hungry. Can hold him off with dummy/water at times but it means dh and I are getting NO sleep. At moment Im giving him 4 feeds of 7-8 oz during day and then he wakes at 930-10pm for a full feed. And again at 1ish and 430-5am....

He is quite chubby but think he is in proportion - over 99th centile for height and weight.

Any body have advice? Solids? I weaned dd at 18 weeks but she was just hungry during day not waking at night.

OP posts:

flack · 05/12/2007 11:00

Feed for his weight, HV is bonkers(!!!)
Something like 2.5 oz/day for each lb in weight, don't know exactly since I only breastfed but someone else shold know the rule.

flack · 05/12/2007 11:03

Actually, I just did the maths, you are already giving him 28-32 oz/day, which I guess is 2.5oz/lb per day. But that's just a generalised rule of thumb, If he wants more and water doesn't placate him I'd give it. How does HV know he's not going thru a growth spurt?

Original poster

boompi · 05/12/2007 11:31

2.5oz/lb would be 50 oz a day. He usually gets around 34-40.

Dont want to overfeed but also dont want him hungry(and therefore sleepless)

OP posts:

gegs73 · 05/12/2007 11:34

I would give him more as well if he wants it.

DS2 6MO is off the chart for height and 99.6 or more for weight. At 18 weeks I would have been giving him 5 8oz bottles then sometimes one 4oz bottle in the night if he woke up. I will probably be stoned for this but I weaned DS2 on baby rice at 18 weeks which did help.

Your HV sounds crazy I really have given up going and I used to sing their praises with DS1. I was worried about how much milk to give him when he was about 10 weeks old and if he was having too much as he is huge. I was told to look on the tin - not much help at all. Seems all they do is weigh him then make me worry so I have given up.

flowerybeanbag · 05/12/2007 12:09

I'd give him whatever he needs. Try an extra feed during the day possibly? That's what we did with DS when he was about the same age. We were feeding him about 7, 11, 2.30 and before bed at about 6-6.15 then a dreamfeed but he showed he needed more, started downing 10oz at some feeds so we introduced another feed at 5ish, which worked brilliantly.

mamasin · 05/12/2007 13:43

have you put him on the "hungry" milk for bigger and hungrier babies? you can give it to him safely as he is over 4 months. My little dd was off the charts re height and I found this did the trick!(we gave her the cow and gate one)

BeeWiseMen · 05/12/2007 14:24

feed for his age????? FFS. Where do they dig these women up from? Just feed him on demand for a couple of days, or try offering him a bottle every couple of hours during the day and see if that does the trick.

Hungry baby milk does work for some babies, so give that a go if the extra feeds don't work. It can give some babies indigestion though (obv cos it's designed to be harder to digest) which could disturb his sleep as much as the hunger.

And please don't worry about making him fat, unless you're force feeding him you can't get him to eat more than he needs. His body is asking for the fuel it needs to grow. I'd just give it to him.

flack · 06/12/2007 16:05

oops, sorry for the maths mistake. See why some people would be really lousy at Formula feeding?

camillathechicken · 06/12/2007 16:10

feed on demand, as much as he wants.. if he is on the same centile for height and weight then he is obviously perfectly in proportion. some babies are hungrier than others !

if he is hungry, then only milk will do ! if he is draining bottles, add an extra ounce.

you could try him on hungry baby milk if you want, but it can make babies constipated.

if you are overfeeding, he will bring it back up

nannynz · 06/12/2007 16:32

My 17 week old charge(7.5kgs) just had his check up and on Monday, he was having 180mls five times a day and then waking in night and having another 60mls. On the can of formula it said he should only be having 900mls so that's what I was going on, oops.

Doctor said at weight he was at he could be having just over 1000mls a day, so we upped his bottles to five 200mls and he's slept through since Monday(11pm - 7am).

Definetly do formula on baby's demand some babes are just hungrier then others.

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