Newborn feeding/pooing

[JFBMac]

I have a week old baby. She is completely formula fed and has not done a poo in about 3 days. I have phoned the midwives and they don't seem worried at all and have told me to try baby massage to see if it helps. I am also a bit concerned as she is taking about 4oz every 3/4 hours. We had her on 3oz however she was continually looking for more. Am I overfeeding her? She never puts up her milk.

There can be quite a lot of variation in normal. My mostly FF DD would poo every 4-5 days at that age. I was told to contact the doctor when it got to 5 days but she usually did a big poo before then. The Baby Bjorn bouncer was a sure fire way to get a poo out for awhile, nothing else seemed to work 😂 Changing the formula brand can also have an effect but you don’t want to be constantly doing that.

If you are feeding on demand and pace feeding the amount will be fine. Even formula fed babies are hard to overfeed if feeding responsively.

We had the exact same with our little boy at about the same age so I know how you feel. I did the same and called the midwife as I was worried and was told pretty much the same as you and sure enough that night there it was!

He also was feeding about the same as yours. I was worried we were overfeeding him but both the midwife and health visitor said as long as he wasn't bringing it back up after feeds he'll be fine. He's 6 weeks on Monday and has between 5 and 6oz every 3 to 4 hours and mainly only wakes for a feed once in the night (thank god 🤣) and seems to be growing lovely 😊

Every baby is different so I wouldn't worry. You're doing great! 😃

We switched ds at 6 weeks old to formula (well combined from 4.5 weeks, fully on formula by 6 weeks), we switched between two brands depending on which shop we were in at the time - Mamia and cow&gate - thinking they were the same. When he was on cow&gate he would go a while without pooing, but on mamia he was frequent.

You could try changing to a different formula and see if that changes anything? Stick with it for a while though to see if it changes? It’s only an idea.

Just rereading, your little one is only a week old, I guess it’s still quite early and might be getting used to the milk at this point.