Feed/sleep of a 19 week old

[Scamp48]

Hello, looking for advice please! My big 19
week old DS seems to be a small feeder! Currently has a 7/7.30am, 10.30am, 2.30pm, 6pm and 10.30pm feed - all bottle. Pretty much each time he manages 4oz - 5oz would be a really good feed. Which if you add all up means that he isn't having anywhere near the amount he should be having according to guidelines on the side of the Aptamil box! Hence, he wakes up at 3.10am (I could set my watch by it!!) every night, where he will have about 2/3oz. I know there will be some mumsnetters who say I should be grateful for getting any sleep at all at this stage, but if anyone has been through this before/has any advice or solutions, I would really appreciate it. He was just over 10oz at birth and would sleep for longer stretches as a newborn than he is now! Thank you in advance! X

Have you started weaning yet? Our lad is 18 weeks and weve started him on aptamil porridge and milk. His early morning feed is slowly disappearing

There is no need to wean at 18 weeks. Aside from anything else, gram for gram the calories in milk are easier for baby to access than anything else. So 'food' of any description is likely to result in overall fewer calories for baby. Not what you want really.

So anyway, try more frequent feeds.

I assume you always offer bottles containing more milk than baby will drink? So Do you cannot realistically expect him to have more per feed, that is limited by the size of his stomach.

You might get more milk in per feed by doing feed>wind>feed. When baby burps it frees up a bit of space in the stomach so it's a good idea to reorder the bottle afterwards.

But mostly, the way to get more milk into baby is to offer feeds more often. It is not unreasonable for baby to have feeds every 2 hours. That's 7 bottles per day in the daytime: 7am 9am 11am 1pm 3pm 5pm 7pm. I would then add a dreamfeed at 11pm when I went to bed, and expect no night feeds until morning. So 8 bottles in 24 hours.

Thanks so much for both replies. Want to try to hold off solids for a little bit longer if I can. More frequent feeds would work although he is having a beautiful lunchtime nap of about 2hours already and I'm reluctant to wake him up from that. But if it means no more night time feeds it would be worth it! thanks again for the advice - do appreciate it.

Also, obviously I meant he was just over 10lbs at birth, not 10oz!!! It's the sleep deprivation 😴

Don't wake baby for a feed, but i would offer a full bottle both before that big 2h sleep and also immediately upon waking.

My youngest was just under 10lb at birth and maintained the 91st centile line for her first 12 months. She was 2 hourly daytime feeding right through until about 7 or 8 months.

The benefits of 2 hourly daytime feeding is baby should then need far fewer calories at night. I was night weaned from 11pm-7am by 12 weeks and night weaned for the 12h over night by 5-6 months old.