Am I overfeeding my baby?

[hodgepodge21]

I have an 8 week old baby boy, who weighed 8lb9oz at birth. I started out breastfeeding exclusively for around a week, but due to pain and low supply ended up combination feeding until he was 6 weeks old. Since then we have exclusively formula fed.

At 7 weeks he weighed 14lb10oz and is consistently 99th percentile. Even during pregnancy he was always two weeks ahead, at scans and at bump measurements. The health visitor has made a few comments about keeping an eye on his weight and potentially trying a dummy to postpone his feeds as much as possible.

However my issue is that he is SUCH a hungry baby! He is currently draining 210ml bottles, so am on the cusp of moving up to 240ml. He had around 1.5 litres a day! If I try to postpone a feed or limit his feeds, he screams bloody murder until I give him more food. I've tried dummies, putting him to nap, distracting him, taking him in the pram and wearing him and NOTHING makes a difference. I have taken this to the absolute limit in terms of trying to delay/distract him - and the longer I leave it - it just makes the feed for difficult and results in him eating even more!

Am I overfeeding him? Is there a way I can reduce what he eats, or should I continue to feed on demand (as recommended) and accept he is a bigger baby?

If that's the size he's always been it's probably just the size he's meant to be. Have you had his length measured? DS2 is high centile for weight but he's not overweight, he's actually quite slim looking in his face and upper body (he has chunky thighs though) It's because he's tall for his age and his weight is in proportion to that.

You need to find out if his length is also above the 75th centile.

DC2 was always very heavy but she was incredibly tall!

Go back to comforting in the colostrum?

@BertieBotts @RandomMess
Thanks for your responses! It's really interesting you mention about length - he hasn't had it measured at all. He is super long in the torso, and has been in 3-6month clothes since 7 weeks because the 0-3month vests etc were way to short for him. The health visitor never mentioned measuring his length, is this something they will do if I ask?

Yes they can measure, they just don't like to do it too often as it's not good for their hips or something.

You will be in trouble with car seats if she really is that long - it might be worth joining a Facebook group called car seat advice UK to get researching before you need to buy the next one :) will save you money in the long run.

If you need to go up in clothes for length in nearly all brands etc you can safely assume he is tall without getting him measured.

It's hard to get an accurate measurement until they are standing. My DD was only measured at birth as she was so unexpectedly heavy, took her months for her height to hit the centile charts 😂

None of the clothes I brought to hospital fitted her length ways, she had thirst newborn velour trousers and they were just below the knees as the baby grow was just too short. Even on her scans her femur length was at the top of the scale.

About the same as mine bottle wise (and moved on to the 240ml bottles around 3months). Always the size up in clothes. The health visitor didn't believe me I don't think when I said baby was drinking 50 ounces at that age (1.5 litres) but he just was.

When I switched to bottle feeding at 16 weeks (went back to work) she would down a full bottle in seconds 😳 she was always good focused, still is 😂 still skinny!

My DS was like this. He was only 6'10 at birth but you wouldn't believe the amount of milk he could pack away. We were told of a few times for over feeding him. This is, he's tall - I'm 5'8 and his dad is over 6 foot so I think he would always have been a bit taller.

He's 4 now and actually underweight, although healthy, and doesn't have much of an appetite at all.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, feed on demand as if he was breastfed.

This sounds so similar to DS - also 8 weeks old and also drinking a similar amount albeit we are still using 5oz bottles so he's probably feeding more frequently. DS was pretty small when born (just under 7lbs) but has been hungry ever since. My personal theory (for which there is no medical proof at all) is that my placenta was starting to fail in the last few weeks and therefore he stopped growing as much as he should and is now making up for lost time. He definitely doesn't look chubby though so I'm just going with it for now. I figure that he's still so small that all he needs to know is that he's safe and secure and will have all his needs met!

My niece was nearly 4lb lighter than DD so she started off very low on the centiles and powered through them.

Niece and DD were very similar from 3 months onwards as DN actually caught up from low birthweight (SIL smoked and was induced a few weeks earlier and the cord was thin and snapped whereas her DC 2 was notably bigger)

DC1 had 8oz every 2-3 hours, DC2 6oz every 2-3 hours. DC2 has always been bigger, it's just her build, despite having less milk.
Feed them till they're full. :)

Thanks everyone for your reassurances! I took him to the GP for his jabs today, and asked for him to be measured. He is 91st percentile for his length, so makes sense why he is on the heavy end too!! Also so good to hear that so many of you had the same experience with the amount of food your babies were eating, I was worried my little one was the only one! Annoyingly the nurse just said the same old crap to me, try and delay feeds, use a dummy, give cooled boiled water etc. Just going to keep doing what I'm doing though, I am not going to let him go hungry just because he is measuring large on some NHS chart! Thanks again all

Ugh but all this 'delay feeds' is totally opposite to demand based feeding etc

Noone should be telling you to not feed a newborn when they need it