Singapore is full of parents that can get competitive. A little kiasu right from a young age. They’d like to compare everything right from the pregnancy. “Did you have a normal delivery? How many hours of labour did you endure? Is yours a full-term baby?”
That doesn’t stop just there. “What, your baby drinks six to eight ounces at one go? If mine has four ounces at one go it’s a huge accomplishment! Just how do you do it?”
Some mums just have to compare everything, especially when it comes to the growth and development of their little ones. While no two babies are the same, sometimes it’s important to know if your baby is getting the right amount of nutrition, especially when it comes to breast milk.
New mums always fret about the baby milk intake, especially when they have a point of comparison. This does beg the question, just how much milk should baby drink?
How Much Milk Should Baby Drink: All You Need To Know
An extremely common question, mums can’t understand why the breastfed baby milk intake seems to be less when compared to formula-fed babies. This leaves mums worrying if they are doing something wrong.
Average feeding pattern
If you’re wondering how much milk should a baby drink, you might be surprised by the answer. Breastfed babies’ milk intake doesn’t actually increase drastically in their first six months of life.
On average, a baby’s milk intake will be about 25 ounces or 750 ml in 24 hours. As their growth slows, babies continue growing and gaining weight without a real increment in their milk consumption
Breastfeeding mums or mums bottle-feeding your children breast milk, don’t worry just yet. Be rest assured that you aren’t doing anything wrong. Drinking more milk is not necessarily better or ideal.
It’s typical for formula-fed babies to consume more milk than babies who are on breast milk. A study done on 16,755 babies, in Belarus, compared the milk intake of formula-fed and breastfed babies.
The study found that formula-fed babies consumed 49 per cent more milk at one month of age, 57 per cent more at three months and 71 per cent more at five months.
Another study done in Australia shows that breastfed babies between one and six months consistently drink about three ounces of milk at each feeding. Younger babies of course take in even less milk.
Why Do Formula-fed Babies Drink More Than Breastfed Babies?
There are a few reasons for this.
1. Milk flow
During the first few months of a baby’s life, upon swallowing the milk, they have a reflex that automatically triggers the suckling action. Unlike breastfeeding, where you have to worry about let down and milk flow, formula milk flows more consistently. As such, babies naturally tend to drink more milk from a bottle at each feeding.
Breastfeeding is different from bottle feeding as milk doesn’t flow as consistently.
Babies eventually outgrow this reflexive suckling so if babies get conditioned to feeding on the bottle, they face the risk of overfeeding. If you’re wondering how much milk should baby drink, it’s probably a lot less than you are feeding them.
2. Breastfed babies have greater control
The problem with breastfeeding is that you are clueless about how much milk your baby is drinking. If they seem satisfied after five minutes of drinking, you are likely to coax her to drink more because you are convinced that she needs more milk.
However, as you watch your baby growing, gaining weight, looking happy and thriving, you start to trust your baby’s instinct and leave it up to them to decide how much they want. Even when introducing solids at a later stage, you allow your baby to take the lead in deciding the quantity of food they want to eat.
A study conducted in the UK on babies between six and 12 months of age discovered that breastfeeding mothers don’t pressure their babies to eat and they pretty much go with the flow. This makes for less stress, a happy mum and a happy baby.
3. When you offer more, they take more
The Belarus study also found that babies who drank more were generally given more milk. Their mothers offered them bottles with more than six ounces of milk at each feeding.
If you offer your baby more milk, she will drink more milk.
4. Different rate of metabolisation
Breast milk has hormones like leptin and adiponectin. These hormones help babies to regulate their appetite and energy metabolism. These hormones also affect their sleep metabolism. Meanwhile, formula-fed babies burn more calories in their sleep as compared to breastfed babies.
5. Insufficient pumping output
Another situation that leaves mums constantly puzzled is the difference between direct latching and pumping. Many mums who have no problems satisfying their babies with direct latching, don’t seem to be able to keep up with the baby’s demand when they pump milk for them.
Sometimes they need to pump twice or even thrice to make enough milk for each feed. And this leaves them wondering if their milk supply is low.
However, there are some things you can do to control the baby milk intake and to reduce the chances of overfeeding. The trick is to keep the milk flow during bottle feeding, slow and steady.
How do control the baby milk intake?
- Don’t upgrade the teat according to the baby’s age, keep it at the slowest milk flow that your baby can accept
- Keep your baby upright while feeding as this slows the flow
- Take a break every now and then and give your baby a chance to realise that she is full and doesn’t actually require more milk
Also, don’t forget that babies often like to comfort latch and when they don’t get to do that, it might seem like they are demanding more milk. However, they are just yearning to suckle for a longer time instead.
Mums, we hope that this article puts you at ease. The next time you are tearing your hair out over how much milk should baby drink, just remember that it’s probably less than you think.
Source: Nancy Mohrbacher
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