How much in a bottle?

[KrisM]

Hi,

I occasionally leave DS with my husband and he'll use a bottle of EBM, if necessary. But, we're having a hard time figuring out how much to have ready. How much, on average, does a 2 month old eat in a sitting? He's eating every 2.5 hours or so, during the day.

We either seem to leave him a bit hungry or have extra milk, which I hate throwing away - too much work to get it!

Thanks,
Kris

[aa2mama]

Well, to give you a rough idea, I think that when DS was 2 months old he ate about 4 ounces per feeding.

[hez]

I used this site: http://www.fourfriends.com/cgi-bin/milk.pl

It got us in the general ballpark for the sitter and we've adjusted as needed.

The other thing for us was that it took awhile for DS to really take (back) to the bottle, so we started with a few smaller bottles (2 & 3 ounces) and worked him up gradually. He only took 4 ounces per sitting at 4 months, but I think he was waiting for Mom on those days :)

[jbowman]

I would leave several bottles with only 2 oz. in them when Ellie was a couple of months old (and I still do that even now). Somedays she would take the bottle really well, and others she would reject it. I totally understand what you mean about not wanting to throw the EBM away (liquid gold!), so to prevent against that I would just leave several bottles with less milk (so if she took the bottle well and still seemed hungry after 2 oz, another 2 oz bottle would be offered). That really minimized waste for us b/c if we didn't use the other bottles I'd freeze the EBM or offer it the next day.

HTH!

[proggoddess]

Our pediatrician said at DD's 2 mo. visit that babies typically drink 24-28 oz. in a day. So divide that by the number of feedings per day. Our DD eats 7-9 times a day. So we fix her 3 oz. bottles and she is pretty good with that. In the morning she typically drinks less, so we sometimes end up with 1/2 oz. or 1 oz. in the bottle that we have to dispose of. I'm thinking if she does this more, we'll start making her a 2 oz. bottle for the morning feeding.

[Chelsey333]

I am bf my 7 wk old son and I gave him a bottle of EBM yesterday. It was 4 ounces. He drank the entire thing and 45 minutes later seemed hungry for more. I would probably leave a 4 ounce bottle and leave an extra 2 ounces in the fridge for your dh to use if needed.