Are we feeding my baby too much breast milk?

[lily2010]

My son is 11 weeks old and exclusively breastfed. I've been back at work for 3 weeks so he gets a lot of bottles now. Two weeks ago, he went to the pediatrician and he weighed 11 lbs (30th percentile for weight, 70th for height).

I had read that babies should eat approximately 2.5 oz of milk per pound of body weight in a 24 hour period. So, figuring that he's probably slightly over 12 lbs. now, that would be 30 oz/day.

A couple weeks ago, he started sleeping more (up to 11 hrs a stretch) and so sometimes we only got 5 feeds in per day (every 3 hours during the day). Based on this, we started giving him 6 oz bottles when he bottle fed.

But now in the past week, he's started sleeping a little less, so has been getting in 6 feeds most days. Obviously I don't know how much he eats when he breastfeeds directly, but I would estimate he's been getting 36 oz/day for the past week. We haven't reduced his bottles because I keep hoping that he'll go back to sleeping longer at night.

Then I found this post this morning
http://community.babycenter.com/post...ating_too_much
where people say a breastfed baby should have a max of 30-32 oz a day, and never more than 4 oz at once.

It kind of freaked me out, even though my son is still very thin. Is it bad to give him 6 oz bottles? I haven't wanted to cut back on food because I keep hoping he'll go back to sleeping 10-11 hour stretches at night.

[elektra]

My son (up until very recently) ALWAYS took 6 oz. bottles and even 8 oz. for awhile too.
So 6 oz. even when he was very little.
I EBF, until I went back to work when DS was about 13 weeks and he would drain 6 oz. bottles of pumped BM from that time on.
He would also drink a full 6 oz. from maybe 8 weeks or so on, when we would give the occasional pumped bottle while I was on maternity leave.
My daugther on the other hand never finished a 6 oz. bottle that I can remember.
It sounds to me like you guys are doing fine.

[ThreeofUs]

Hmmm... I always look to kellymom.com for info on things like this. So, here's the page, look about 1/2 way down:

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/milkcalc.html

[Andi98989]

DS has been bottle-fed breast milk since he was born. By about 12 weeks he was consistently taking six 6-ounce bottles a day, and some cereal. We started some solids around 5 months. He's currently wavering between five and six bottles a day; his early morning bottle is 7 ounces, his others are generally around 6-1/2 ounces; on the days when he has only had 5 bottles, sometimes he'll end up taking 8 ounces in that last bottle.

We've consistently been in the 50th percentile for weight and the 95th percentile for height.

[mrshalco]

It's so funny how different the answers will be to this question. I have BF both my sons. I went back to work at 12 weeks with #1 and 15 weeks with #2. I nursed #1 until 22 months....#2 is still going strong at 15 months. I never gave either of them more than 4oz at a time and they were/are BIG babies. Both were 90th %ile in weight past their first year.

I always follow the advice on Kellymom. I think they have the best links and calculators!