how much is too much

hi, i am a new mum to 10 week old maxwell who absolutely loves his bottle. He is gaining weight at a steady pace and is 6.4kg and 62cm long, he looks in proportion but am worried that he may be eating too much. He is still waking for a night feed at 2am and averages 6 feeds a day of 200mls. Is this too much??? most days he also has small amounts of water between feeds because of the heat in qld.
I would appreciate any opinions/advice in regards to this matter and how to get rid of the 2am feed and keep him happy (tried substituting with a dummy but was very grizzly till he eventually got feed an hr later)

thanks in advance

Hi Michelle,

Congratulations on becoming Maxwell's mum. I have twin boys so learning about eating habits for two very different babies was of great interest to me. Check with your nurse/clinic. But we started to wean the twins off their 2am feed. Between 11pm and 6am (roughly) we gave them a reduced amount of formula over about 3 weeks gradually reducing the strength. The theory being that they would soon work out it was not worth waking up for a feed because there were no calories in it. This was recommended by our nurse and it has worked great (touch wood). Our boys are 5 months and we started this around 4 months. My boys are on 5 feeds a day of 200mls plus solids once a day. Hope some of this helped. PS If Maxwell is healthy and happy then you are doing everything right.

I can't tell you anything about bottle feeding, mine has always been breast fed. But i can tell you that babies usually still wake up at that time for a feed. My daughter was 8 weeks old when she stopped that, but she was still have the 10pm feed and the 6am feed. now she sleeps from 8pm to 8am, but she is 5 months old now. It's great you are giving him water, in this heat (I'm from north qld) they need water. Bottle fed babies are naturally bigger then breast fed babies, because of the formula, it can't be fully matched to breast milk, but he will grow out of it. I know lots of large babies on the bottle and they grow out of it by the time they're 2 years old. I wouldn't be holding back on the feeds otherwise he will be unsettles. He knows what he needs, and if he needs a feed he won't be happy until he is fed, then he will settle.
You sound like you're doing a good job, keep it up.

As long as his weight and length are in roughly the same spot on the growth chart in the Child Health Record (which in the Victorian book he is) then he is only taking what he needs. My theory was always when all else fails give him a bottle regardless of whether he was due for one and I was worried I was overfeeding him, but when a bottle was the only thing that would make him happy he obviously needed it. He's now 9 months old and is 10.3 kgs and 73 cm long which is the correct weight for his height, so all those extra feeds certainly didn't make him overweight and even the health nurse said he obviously needs everything he takes. So my advice is go with the flow, if he's like my boy he'll go through growth spurts more often than not. And as for the 2 am feeds, you'll probably find all of a sudden one night you'll wake up at 2:30 am in a panic wondering why you haven't heard him cry only to find he's soundly sleeping and stays that way for the rest of the night.

Hello Michelle

babies are known to only eat what they need so if maxwell is still drinking his bottle he must still be hungry.

Our boy stopped waking for at about 10 weeks so I am sure maxwell will stop waking at 2am soon enough and will sleep right through!

good luck

dear all who replied,

thankyou so much for all the postive feedback, being a first time mum its the hardest job i've ever had and sometimes a bit of feedback from an recently experienced mum helps alot, certainly gives me an extra bit of confidence in the fact that im gradually getting better at the task on hand.

Max is now 12 weeks old and is down to five feeds a day and going 8 -9 hours between feeds, unfortunately for me he has given up his 10pm feed and not is 2am feed but im not complaining i realise im very lucky. Have tried waking him at 10pm to see if he will give up the 2am, but doesnt work he eats both! Hopefully when i start him on a bit of rice cereal he will sleep a little bit longer or readjust his times.

Thankyou all again, i really appreciate your replies and love reading about all your children. Its great to see how truley blessed we are to have our children and how much we love them in return