Can FF baby overfeed?

[Sectionprep]

Really worried that I'm overfeeding my FF baby.

She's 4 weeks old and is having between 800-900ml of formula per day. She's genuinely hungry and touches her mouth when crying ans will only stop crying for a bottle. No vomiting beyond small possets, pooing and weeing fine but does seem to have a lot of wind.

When she was born she was jaundiced for over a week and we really struggled to get her to feed, she was taking less than 100ml a day for most of the first week. When she started feeding we were so happy but now I'm worried she's overfeeding- she's gained 10oz this week (MW didn't seem concerned about this however).

Is this okay?!

Does she have a dummy? Young babies have a sucking reflex and sometimes want to keep sucking on the bottle for this reason.

That’s about 150ml/5oz 4hourly, is she keeping it down? I think if she’s taking it all/draining her bottles and not vomiting then just see how she goes. Is it the midwife you’re seeing or the health visitor as mw don’t tend to stick around longer than 10 days pp.

she might also like to suck does she have a dummy? If not perhaps that would soothe her instead of feeding?….you could try a slower flow bottle too if she’s windy?

I’m afraid FF babies definitely can be over fed. Check the guidance on how much she should be having at this age - how does she compare?

How many ml or oz at each feed?
The midwife or HV will be able to calculate how much formula she should be having according to her current weight in Kg but this is a guide. Baby only has a tiny tummy at this age.
Look at paced feeding which aims to prevent over feeding formula fed babies.
But try not to worry I know it can be overwhelming

From what I've read it is possible to overfeed them, however- my DD is 13 weeks, she was doing similar to yours at 4/5 weeks and having way more formula in a 24 hour period than was recommended. She wasn't spitting up loads and seemed genuinely hungry so I just went with it, and at her 6 week weigh in her weight was tracking perfectly, HV said I did the right thing not to attempt to restrict her feeds as she was obviously having a growth spurt and needed it.

The only thing to look out for is excess spit up/vomiting, and try to do the paced feeding, that way baby has as much control as possible over how much they drink. Try not to stress, if you're doing responsive feeding it's likely you're just giving her what she needs!

Yes it is possible but it’s also really quite rare and usually goes along with reflux (including silent reflux) as swallowing the milk provides temporary relief from the acid reflux.

For the most part though babies are excellent at regulating even when formula fed. As a rough guide you’re looking at 2.5oz of formula per pound of bodyweight in a 24 hour period. So if baby weighs 12lbs, they should be having around 30oz (or 900ml) every day and that might look like a 5oz bottles every 4 hours.

The amount she feeds really varies, her bottles are 120mls, sometimes she will take the whole bottle in one sitting but other times she will take 120ml over a couple of hours. Looking at yesterday, she took 840ml over 14 feeds from midnight to midnight. Midwife signed us off today as she took 4 weeks to get past her birth weight.

@Sectionprep my boy is almost 10 months now but I looked back on my app where I log his feeds and he was doing a similar amount per day, just a hungry boy :)

Thank you so much, I've really been panicking!