kcollins14
New member
Apologies for long post in advance!
Hi all
FTM mom with a 7 week old baby girl, and she is struggling to gain weight. I was reading a few other threads and sounds like everyone at this age is eating 3-3.5oz per feeding 7-8 times a day. How is everyone able to get so much in their baby? We are feeding 80ml-100ml 7 times a day and I feel like it's at the max of what she will take in.
She will usually go through the first 30-40ml with no resistance. Then she starts making faces, rejecting the bottle and pushing it out with her tongue, crying, flailing. Other times she straight up falls asleep and doesnt acknowledge the world so if we keep jamming the bottle in it'll just dribble out of her. Every time through various tricks -- wake her up with cold wipes, change/burp her then back to feeding, forcing bottle repeatedly -- she will take the entirety of the bottle but barely. It's a battle every time. A few times we tried to force 100ml consistently (instead of alternating 80/100) and she gush-vomited twice in one day, probably losing half the bottle content. I was actually concerned it was projectile (pyloric stenosis) at first but looks like this does not happen consistently and only happens when we try to overfeed her so we stopped forcing it so hard and the vomiting has abated.
Initially we were doing triple feeding. I'd BF, then i would pump and husband would supplement with 40-50 ml formula. But I think she is a lazy eater and transfers very little and it's hard to know how much she was really eating, so we switched to pump + bottle feed to know exactly how much is getting into her. and turns out 80ish average is what she is willing to eat during the day, and we manage to get 2 feedings of 100ml at night since the stretches are longer.
But reading everyone's comment in another thread, 24oz per day or 3-3.5oz per feeding session, we're just not there. Her weight gain has also been concerning. She gains weight at a painfully slow rate, it crawls up by 0.3-0.5oz per day, sometimes it's flat from previous day. She was born at 39% precentile but I think she's barely above 15% now ,we have a doctor's appointment next week. We've been weighing her on our own baby scale at home which may be inaccurate.
I'm getting quite concerned now and I guess my question to everyone is -- is it a such a battle feeding your LO (6-7 weeks?) Do you have to fight them for an hour and repeatedly coax them to eat or do they naturally just take in more? Does your LO ever vomit (more than spit up, gushes out of her nose and mouth but not projectile) from overfeeding? I dread each feeding session because she seems so miserable when we force the bottle but she just doesnt want to eat remotely enough a lot of the time.
I will talk to my ped next week during our appointment , but just wanted to get an idea on everyone else's feeding patterns. Thanks in advance for all advice/suggestions/data points!
Edit: I should add that she was born at 7.7lb so slightly above average, and 3.91kg at 1 month which is 31 percentile. I think based on our weighting she's close to 15 percentile now. So not the end of the world but still I'm concerned (sorry about metric and imperical back and forth!)
TLDR: struggling to get my girl to eat more than 80-100ml per session at 7 weeks and weight gain is crawling.
Hi all
FTM mom with a 7 week old baby girl, and she is struggling to gain weight. I was reading a few other threads and sounds like everyone at this age is eating 3-3.5oz per feeding 7-8 times a day. How is everyone able to get so much in their baby? We are feeding 80ml-100ml 7 times a day and I feel like it's at the max of what she will take in.
She will usually go through the first 30-40ml with no resistance. Then she starts making faces, rejecting the bottle and pushing it out with her tongue, crying, flailing. Other times she straight up falls asleep and doesnt acknowledge the world so if we keep jamming the bottle in it'll just dribble out of her. Every time through various tricks -- wake her up with cold wipes, change/burp her then back to feeding, forcing bottle repeatedly -- she will take the entirety of the bottle but barely. It's a battle every time. A few times we tried to force 100ml consistently (instead of alternating 80/100) and she gush-vomited twice in one day, probably losing half the bottle content. I was actually concerned it was projectile (pyloric stenosis) at first but looks like this does not happen consistently and only happens when we try to overfeed her so we stopped forcing it so hard and the vomiting has abated.
Initially we were doing triple feeding. I'd BF, then i would pump and husband would supplement with 40-50 ml formula. But I think she is a lazy eater and transfers very little and it's hard to know how much she was really eating, so we switched to pump + bottle feed to know exactly how much is getting into her. and turns out 80ish average is what she is willing to eat during the day, and we manage to get 2 feedings of 100ml at night since the stretches are longer.
But reading everyone's comment in another thread, 24oz per day or 3-3.5oz per feeding session, we're just not there. Her weight gain has also been concerning. She gains weight at a painfully slow rate, it crawls up by 0.3-0.5oz per day, sometimes it's flat from previous day. She was born at 39% precentile but I think she's barely above 15% now ,we have a doctor's appointment next week. We've been weighing her on our own baby scale at home which may be inaccurate.
I'm getting quite concerned now and I guess my question to everyone is -- is it a such a battle feeding your LO (6-7 weeks?) Do you have to fight them for an hour and repeatedly coax them to eat or do they naturally just take in more? Does your LO ever vomit (more than spit up, gushes out of her nose and mouth but not projectile) from overfeeding? I dread each feeding session because she seems so miserable when we force the bottle but she just doesnt want to eat remotely enough a lot of the time.
I will talk to my ped next week during our appointment , but just wanted to get an idea on everyone else's feeding patterns. Thanks in advance for all advice/suggestions/data points!
Edit: I should add that she was born at 7.7lb so slightly above average, and 3.91kg at 1 month which is 31 percentile. I think based on our weighting she's close to 15 percentile now. So not the end of the world but still I'm concerned (sorry about metric and imperical back and forth!)
TLDR: struggling to get my girl to eat more than 80-100ml per session at 7 weeks and weight gain is crawling.
