Bottle Feeding TIps

Bottle Feeding Tips

Bottle Up author Suzanne Barston provides some insightful bottle feeding tips. Parents are often very unsure about the amount and frequency of what they should be feeding their baby. The general rule of thumb is to feed 2.5 ounces of formula for every pound of your baby’s body weight. Since babies’ appetites can vary, the best thing is to feed based on hunger cues, similar to breastfeeding.

Transcription:

- A lot of formula-fed parents are very confused on the amount and frequency of what they should be feeding their baby, and this is because there's really no good information out there. But, on the other hand, I personally do not believe that we should be treating formula-fed babies that differently from breast-fed babies. And when I say that, I mean that we should be feeding based on hunger cues and not on what a chart tells us to be feeding. There are some basic guidelines, so for example, they say 2.5 ounces of formula approximately for every pound of body weight. So if you have a 10 pound baby, that means about 25 ounces of ... Read more

formula a day. But just like adults, there are some babies who have faster metabolisms or smaller appetites, so your baby may only drink 20 ounces of formula a day and still be growing and thriving perfectly well. Or you may have a baby who needs a little more. And I think there's a danger, because there's this meme that's been perpetuated that formula-fed babies are more prone to obesity. The studies on this are actually not that clear as the media's making them out to be, and in addition to that, we need to be careful not to underfeed, especially newborns, because babies need food to live. You really can't overfeed a newborn, unless you're forcing them to finish a bottle, or you are answering every single cry with feeding them instead of comforting them. You're probably gonna be okay. And newborns will throw up any excess formula that you give them. They don't have the capacity to comfort feed at that age, so just feed on demand, and try to learn hunger cues the same as a breast-fed mother would, breast feeding mother would, and you should be just fine.