Hi everybody, Melissa.
So you've made it through month one, congratulations!
That's huge!
And at this point your baby most likely, check with your doctor, can make the transition
between on-demand feeding and getting into some sort of a feeding and sleeping schedule.
Love that!
More time for mom, such an important thing.
So this show we're going to walk through feeding and sleeping schedules for babies who are
between the ages of four weeks and sixteen weeks, one month and four months.
Okay, let's start out with how much formula you need to be giving to your baby at this
point.
By month one, your baby will likely be eating approximately three to four ounces of formula
per feed.
Then between months one and four your baby likely will increase the amount of formula
he or she will eat per feed by about one ounce per month.
Continuing up until around month six at which point she may eat between seven and eight
ounces.Now another way to approximate this, and you will see this calculation a lot.
And for those of us who are not math people, it's very intimidating at first.
But it is helpful to do the following thing.
And I'm going to put up a graphic here because this gets a little mathy.
What you can do is you can take the weight of your baby and you can multiply your baby's
weight by the number 2.5 to get one total number.
Then you can divide that number by the number of feedings your baby has every day.
So let's take an example.
Assume your baby weighs eight pounds and your baby's eating every four hours or six times
a day.
8 x 2.5 is 20 that's the amount of food under this calculation that your baby will be eating
in total over 24 hours.
In order to get the per feed amount, your going to take 20 and your going to divide
it by six.
And you're going to get the amount 3.3 ounces of formula.
Now the thing to think about here and this really is when your doctor is going to come
into the picture is that this is a general guideline.
This is going to vary a lot depending upon when your baby was born, how big your baby
is there's going to be a real range.
Some people say that their baby tends to eat about 3 ounces per pound at each feeding under
this calculation.
Some people say it's two so it's really going to vary.
And it shouldn't you know, freak you out.
But it's just sort of a good general guideline for you to have because it gives you some
general sense of how much formula your baby should be eating.
Okay, so that's the formula for how much your baby should be eating- sorry guys this is
a lot of stuff I have in my head and I have my notes here because I'm trying to get it
all right.
Any way, that's the amount of formula that your baby should be eating per feed.
Let's talk a little bit about when your baby can be having this formula because one of
the really beautiful things that can happen around this age is that you can start put
your baby on a schedule and this is really the way that your going to do.
Try to start your first feeding everyday at or around 7 or 8am.
Okay, feed your baby-make sure your baby's full - you'll notice when your baby starts
to kind of lose interest in the bottle and seems full, she should be awake, she's burped
but she doesn't want anymore.
If she keeps wanting to eat and eat, definitely talk to your doctor because overfeeding with
bottle fed babies is something you have to be careful about.
Okay, but do that.
At that point, look at your watch and keep track of when your baby first started to eat.
Around one and half to two hours after that feed began, swaddle your baby, and put her
down in the crib for a nice nap.
Okay, so that's what you're going to do.
And then no later than four hours after your baby began that first feed.
You're going to wake up your baby and your going to start your second feed of the day.
Now that little nap time is when you're going to get your break.
So that's a very, very important thing to you.
So what will happen is that your baby will start to get a lot of the food that she needs
during the day and she'll start to be awake for a good part of the day.
So she will start to do those nice longer stretches at night.
This does also have to do physiologically where the baby is but you're doing everything
you can to make sure that your baby is starting to sleep more during the night and be awake
and eat more during the day, which is a beautiful thing.
So, let's put up a graphic and run through what your schedule's going to look like if
you're feeding your baby every four hours such as is what we've been talking about.
7am, 11am, 3pm, 7pm, 11pm, and 3am -now the first one of these feed's that drops off is
actually the 3am feed.
And AAP talks about this, they say that between around 2-4 months many babies will drop that
late nighttime feed.
And this is an incredible thing; all of a sudden you're able to sleep from 12am to 7am-
not so bad.
Okay, and later on down the line hopefully before 6 months that 11pm or final feed also
will be one that you can drop off and hopefully your baby is going to be sleeping from about
7 or 8pm all the way through to till the morning hopefully till about 7 or 8am.
So that is basic schedule for formula fed babies between the ages of 1 and 4 months.
I hope this will prove helpful to you and all the best with getting your baby onto a
schedule that works for you.