How is everyone’s LO eating so much at 6-7 weeks?

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.
 
@kcollins14 How long does it take you to get through 80-100 mL? Have you tried switching to the next nipple size up? That's what helped us increase volume as we were in a similar situation.
 
@simon1065 Hi, thanks for the reply. it takes 20-40 min depending on the day. We had started with Dr. Brown's size 1 nipple initially way back but she just spat up way too much and couldnt deal. We switched to premie nipple and she takes it in a lot better (gas, fussiness), but it just takes FOREVER. We only recently discovered there is a transition nipple between Premie and 1 called T (for transition) and have been using that the last 2 weeks, took her a while to get used to it but she's okay with it now, but it's not super fast. We are worried about gas and spitup if we go up again so soon..
 
@kcollins14 It's possible your LO is getting tired even with the T. Would suggest switching back to the 1. I'm not sure what angle you hold you LO at when feeding but we found spit up more minimized when holding at least at a 45 degree angle versus something shallower.
 
@simon1065 Will try the 1 nipple again, thanks for the suggestion. By 45 degrees u mean bottom of bottle tilted up forming 45 with the ground right? That’s more tilted than our usual but will give a try! 🙏
 
@kcollins14 Sorry, I should have been more specific! Your baby's body angle. I found that when mine was in a laying down position that spitup happened more frequently. Sitting up the baby a bit might help you. Bottle perpendicular to baby's body, more or less.
 
@kcollins14 I really wish doctors would be more clear that the feeding amounts and frequencies are just guidelines! Babies aren’t robots, they’re people, and their appetites fluctuate just like ours.

My baby is 10 weeks and she still usually can’t eat 3-4 oz in one sitting. She snacks all day on 1-2 oz, occasionally a 4 oz if she had an especially long nap, and a bigger feed at night.

Wait to see what your pediatrician has to say about the weight trajectory but in the meantime please stop forcefeeding the baby! She doesn’t want or need it if she’s vomiting it back up. Try to follow her hunger cues instead of a set feeding schedule. It’s possible she doesn’t want that much all at once but will take smaller portions more frequently.
 
@mynameisapp Amen! I say this to my patients ALL THE TIME! But there’s so much nonsense and misinformation around feeding and also a lot of mom shaming for a lot of different reasons around feeding. Finally, the growth curve it’s just that, a curve. Everyone needs to sit somewhere, but it’s just a way for us to follow along and make sure there are no real big issues in being overweight or underweight. Most kids will thin out and grow the way they are meant to grow, we just need to give them time.
 
@mynameisapp Hi thanks for the suggestion! I think she may be getting hungry throughout the day and I will try to feed her maybe more frequently but less quantity each time. Problem is we are exclusive bottle feeding (pumped/formula mix) so the bottle is good for 1 hr each time once we mix and heat. It’s hard to know how much to put in a bottle each time if she eats unpredictably much and the rest goes wasted. Any suggestions ?
 
@kcollins14 Get a formula pitcher!!!!! At that age my son was eating a variable amount each time depending on what was going on that day, so we would just pour him a little from the pitcher and add more as needed.

Really reduced our formula waste and no more mixing 2-4 oz at a single time while baby screams impatiently.
 
@4ever4him Wish I had known this before. I feel kinda bad about giving her warm milk and then suddenly cold…

Thanks for your tips I will definitely look into a formula pitcher!
 
@4ever4him Btw is this pitcher plastic or glass? Hard to tell from photos but my husband is (probably overly dramatic) finicky about microplastics and refuses to use plastic things for baby.
 
@kcollins14 It’s plastic. After doing some research and finding that micro plastics become problematic primarily when plastic is being heated, so since we only use cool or cold water for the formula I was comfortable using it for baby.

You could definitely get a 24 or 32 oz glass water bottle with a wide mouth or regular pitcher with an airtight lid and just use the metal shaker from a protein shaker bottle too!
 
@kcollins14 Are you fortifying the ebm? If you're mixing the two just to get volume, i would suggest giving the breastmilk first then topping up with formula. Esp since breastmilk has a longer shelf life at room temp. But this doesn't apply if you need to mix the two to increase caloric density of the milk.
 
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