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Can you feed your baby too much


How To Tell If You're Overfeeding Baby

We spend so much time fussing over whether baby is getting enough formula or breast milk—and for new parents it can be hard to tell what’s actually enough. Many parents may try to coax baby to finish their bottle or worry that baby isn’t eating enough, when really, baby has just had their fill. So can that well-intentioned fussing possibly lead to overfeeding baby?

Keep in mind that signs of a healthy baby may differ across cultures. “Different cultures have different feelings about how much a baby should eat, how often they should eat and what they should look like,” says Alanna Levine, MD, a pediatrician at Orangetown Pediatric Associates in Orangeburg, New York. Some parents consider a roly-poly baby a sign of a job well done, while other parents see a round baby and visualize an obese teen.

While cultural perceptions of a healthy baby may vary, when it comes to feeding, there are few things to keep in mind. Read on to learn how overfeeding baby can happen, signs to look for and what to do going forward.

In this article:
Can you overfeed a baby?
What leads to overfeeding?
Signs of overfeeding baby
How to avoid overfeeding baby

Can You Overfeed a Baby?

You can probably breathe a sigh of relief: Overfeeding baby is almost impossible, and most of the anxiety over babies’ food intake and appearance is pointless. “If baby is gaining weight and growing and your pediatrician isn’t concerned, you don’t need to worry,” Levine says. Different babies grow at different rates and eat different amounts at different times.

Babies come with an incredibly sophisticated self-regulation system: When they’re hungry, they eat, and when they’re full, they stop. (Sadly, we’ve lost this mechanism by the time we become parents.) So when babies turn away from the bottle or breast and refuse to even consider another nip, they’re telling you they’re full. When baby keeps coming back for more, that’s a sign they’re truly hungry (even if they just finished a full six ounces!).

Overfeeding breastfed babies vs. formula-fed babies

Pediatricians Dina DiMaggio, MD, and Anthony F. Porto, MD, MPH, authors of The Pediatrician’s Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers, echo the importance of listening to your child’s cue, regardless of whether they’re breastfed or formula-fed. “We are often asked, ‘how come my child didn’t finish their bottle of formula?’ but are rarely asked that when children are breastfed.” (Probably because it’s a lot easier to see—and worry about—how much milk went into a bottle.)

On average, a full-term newborn drinks 2 ounces of formula per bottle every three to four hours, or breastfeeds on demand (about eight to 12 times a day), according to DiMaggio and Porto. At one month old, baby will likely drink 3 to 4 ounces of formula per bottle every three to four hours, while a breastfeeding baby may feed approximately seven or eight times a day. This pattern of baby drinking more ounces of formula or breastfeeding fewer times a day lasts until they are eight to 12 months old, at which point baby may drink seven to eight ounces of formula per bottle or breastfeed three to four times a day.

While these figures will vary with each child, it’s important to remember it’s perfectly normal for baby not to finish their bottle, as long as they’re hydrated and eating enough throughout the day. “Infants have a better understanding of when they’re full and, unlike most adults, don’t just eat whatever serving size is put in front of them,” DiMaggio and Porto say.

What Leads to Overfeeding?

Overfeeding baby is very rare, but it can happen. It’s more common in bottle-fed babies, simply because it’s easier for parents to see how much food their child is consuming. It also takes less effort to drink from a bottle, so babies (who love to suck) may inadvertently get too much milk while feeding.

If you’re concerned about possibly overfeeding baby, talk to your pediatrician. The doctor will look at baby’s length, weight and development, but as long as baby is thriving, they’re probably eating just fine.

Signs of Overfeeding Baby

The good news is, since you’ll likely be visiting a pediatrician often in first few months, you can track baby’s weight gain and feeding patterns. But don’t rely on weight as an indicator of whether you’re overfeeding baby. Instead, spitting up could be a sign you’ve pushed baby to take in extra food—for example, if baby spits up after draining a bottle you kept offering after they turned away. But more often than not, spitting up is a typical infant reaction or reflux.

If you’re worried baby is eating too much for their age or has symptoms of vomiting, your pediatrician might recommend limiting how many ounces baby is drinking or how many times they feed, DiMaggio and Porto say. In most cases, however, as long as baby is healthy and doing well, feeding changes aren’t necessary.

How to Avoid Overfeeding Baby

If you learn you’ve been overfeeding baby, make a point of respecting your child’s feeding cues going forward. “If baby turns away before the bottle is finished or before your usual nursing time is up, accept the fact that they may not be hungry now,” Levine says. Don’t focus on the numbers: It doesn’t matter how many ounces baby finishes at each feeding. What matters is that baby is healthy and happy overall.

Updated February 2020

Expert bios:

Alanna Levine, MD, is a pediatrician at Orangetown Pediatric Associates in Orangeburg, New York, and works on staff at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey. In addition, she serves as a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Dina DiMaggio, MD, and Anthony F. Porto, MD, MPH, are co-authors of The Pediatrician’s Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers: Practical Answers to Your Questions on Nutrition, Starting Solids, Allergies, Picky Eating and More, as well as spokespeople for the American Academy of Pediatrics. DiMaggio is a clinical assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at NYU Langone in New York City, and Porto is a pediatric gastroenterologist at Yale New Haven Health and medical director of the Yale Pediatric Celiac Program in New Haven, Connecticut.

Please note: The Bump and the materials and information it contains are not intended to, and do not constitute, medical or other health advice or diagnosis and should not be used as such. You should always consult with a qualified physician or health professional about your specific circumstances. Plus, more from The Bump:

Your Ultimate Guide to How to Bottle-Feed a Baby

Breastfeeding 101: How to Breastfeed Baby

What You Need to Know About Baby Growth Spurts

Can a Newborn Eat Too Much? How to Not Overfeed Your Baby

Signs of newborn overeating and ways to give the proper nutrition

By NewFolks

Can you overfeed a newborn? In short, yes, you can, but it doesn’t happen often. Every newborn has differences in appetite where one might drink a bottle or breastfeed longer than the other. Regardless, you can recognize the signs when your child has overeaten. Overfeeding a newborn often causes discomfort to the child because they can’t properly digest all breast milk or formula.

Contents

  • Signs of overfeeding baby on a regular basis
  • What causes a newborn to eat too much?
  • How to deal with overeating in a newborn

When overeating, the child can also ingest air, which may produce gas, increase abdominal discomfort, or cause crying. A child can even spit more than usual and have a soft stool. Although the discomfort of crying is not colic, they can cry more frequently than a child who already has colic. Therefore, you’ll need to watch for the signs of overfeeding your baby.

These are the signals that will clue you into how hungry (or not) your baby is.

  • Holding the breast or bottle and continuously sucking (which indicates hunger)
  • Taking longer breaks between sucking (meaning that he or she is full)
  • Moving away from the breast or bottle (signaling fullness)

The amount of food each newborn needs will vary, but there are signs that generally show that a baby is gaining enough nutrition, such as a happy demeanor and good muscle tone.

Overeating, however, means that the baby consumes more milk (breast milk or formula) than they need for growth. Getting too much milk can overload a child’s small stomach and consequently get in the way of proper digestion.

Signs of overfeeding baby on a regular basis

Likewise, here are the signs of overfeeding a newborn that you’ll need to be aware of.

  • Above-average weight gain
  • Frequent, nauseating bowel movements
  • Large burping
  • Milk regurgitation
  • Irritability
  • Sleep disturbance

Symptoms associated with overeating are usually mistaken for colic, reflux, allergies, or intolerances to milk protein, or lactose intolerances. What separates the overeating from these conditions is that your child shows healthy growth, which does not happen when he or she has a digestive issue or a food allergy.

What causes a newborn to eat too much?

There are plenty of reasons a newborn overeats which include:

  • Sleep deprivation: Lack of sleep disrupts the hormonal balance, which regulates appetite, resulting in increased appetite.
  • Development: Babies are at the stage of oral development. In addition to wanting to suck when they are hungry, they also like to suck when they are tired, bored, uncomfortable, frustrated, or simply because they want to.
  • Active sucking reflex: Babies have a limited ability to stop when they’ve had enough milk due to the sucking reflex, especially when feeding quickly.
  • Fast feeding: This increases the likelihood that a child will ingest more milk than the stomach can contain or more than their tiny digestive system can adequately digest.
  • Association of feeding and sleep: A child who falls asleep regularly by sucking a bottle can learn that the way they fall asleep is with a bottle in their mouth. This means that a child may want a bottle not only when they are hungry, but also when they are tired.
  • Ignoring the signs of satiety: Satiety means that the child is full. The caregiver may try to force the child to consume the amount in the bottle after the child has shown signs of being full. Forced feeding of the baby is easy to implement while the baby’s sucking reflex is active (from birth to 3-4 months), and therefore it is easy to force the baby to take more than necessary.

How to deal with overeating in a newborn

For starters, it is important not to limit the baby’s milk intake, but to help them to self-regulate. If you happen to overload the baby, don’t stress too much. In the future, you would need to watch for signs of being full. If he or she moves away before the end of the bottle or before the usual time of breastfeeding ends, then your baby is saying that the feeding was enough. If you are concerned about your child overeating, talk to your pediatrician. The doctor will examine the length, weight, and development of the baby and make some recommendations.

Overfeeding a newborn is very rare, but it can happen. It is more common in children who breastfeed, simply because parents can’t exactly determine the quantity that the baby has taken in. However, don’t focus on the amount because the quantity varies with each feeding. After all, you’ll be able to tell if your child is healthy and happy.

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Too much milk? Reduced lactation

Sometimes you may feel like you are producing too much milk, especially in the first weeks of breastfeeding. After reading our article, you will find out if you really have too much milk, and what can be done to reduce it.

Share this information

Breast milk is very healthy, so it's good to have a lot of it, right? However, this is not always the case. Babies can sometimes have a hard time coping with the rapid rush of milk that usually accompanies excess lactation. And mothers who have too much milk often experience discomfort due to the constant leakage of milk and often suffer from mastitis.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to help in this situation. But before using them, answer two important questions:

Do I really have too much milk?

Some of the symptoms of over-lactation (listed below) may occur for very different reasons. You should not try to reduce the production of breast milk, if you are not sure that it is the overabundance of it that is the main problem. Otherwise, this can lead to the fact that your baby will produce less milk than your baby needs, especially in the critical first month when production is just being established.

Is being overweight a problem for me or my baby?

If you are sure that you have an excess of milk, but this does not cause problems for you and your baby, you do not need to do anything. In most cases, everything returns to normal within the first few months. As the baby grows, he will learn to better cope with the rapid flow of milk and will feed with pleasure.

Leakage is not always a sign of too much milk

During the first four to six weeks of your baby's birth, the level of prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production, will rise each time the breast is emptied. In these first weeks, the breast learns to produce milk in the amount that the baby needs, depending on the time of day. Therefore, excessive leakage, rapid filling of the breast, and even splashing of milk during a rush are the norm. 1

At the same time, your baby is learning to suck and swallow milk, so you shouldn't be surprised if he suddenly coughs or chokes when he suckles.

After about four to six weeks, the spikes in prolactin levels will begin to fade and milk production will become more balanced, adjusting to your baby's needs on a supply and demand basis. 2 However, given the many hormonal changes that occur in the body of a young mother, such a restructuring may take some time. In some mothers, milk production is established quickly, in others a little longer.

Behavior of the child, which may indicate an excess of milk

When overproduced, milk is usually released very quickly, especially during the first flush. As a result, the baby may cough or choke at the beginning of a feed, push back, or hold the breast loose in the mouth. The baby may pull away from the chest, frightened by a quick rush, and then cry because he hasn’t eaten. He can swallow milk in large volumes and with a lot of air, and after that he will spit up a lot. Try to be as careful as possible when you help him burp - sudden movements combined with a full tummy can cause the baby to vomit and scare him even more.

At the start of a feed, milk is relatively low in fat and consists mainly of lactose (sugar) and proteins. As the breast is fed and emptied, the fat content constantly increases. In the case of excess milk production, your baby may feel full before he completely empties his breast. This means that he will get a lot of lactose-rich milk, but not enough fat-rich milk that comes towards the end of a feed. Excess lactose instead of a balanced diet can make digestion difficult and cause hard, frothy, and greenish stools.

Oddly enough, in such a situation, the baby may constantly want to eat and behave restlessly between feedings. Despite the high calorie content, the low fat content of milk prevents it from being fully satiated. It is the fat contained in food that gives us a feeling of satiety. What happens if you eat a few dozen rice crackers or a slice of cheese with a cookie instead? You will fill up on cheese faster, as it is more saturated with fats.

However, all these symptoms can be caused by completely different problems, such as reflux, allergies, or even vice versa, insufficient milk production. An excess of breast milk can indeed cause these symptoms, but only if they are accompanied by excessive weight gain. Children usually dial around 900 g per month, but in the case of an excess of milk, they can gain much more, often almost twice as much. 1 If you feel like you are having too much milk but your baby is gaining weight normally, contact your lactation consultant or your healthcare provider.

Symptoms that may indicate an excess of milk in mothers

Mothers with an excess of breast milk often experience swelling and tightness in the breast, which constantly seems full. 3 As already noted, the leakage of breast milk in the first six weeks does not indicate its excess. However, if this continues at every feeding and after this period, it may be that the problem is in the overabundance.

The baby is not always able to empty a full breast, so when there is an excess of breast milk, blockage of the milk ducts or periodic bouts of mastitis often occur. However, these problems can also be caused by other reasons.

How to reduce milk production

If you have found that you have too much breastmilk and this is causing you concern, here are a few simple things that can help. For some mothers, they are enough.

  • Try feeding in a relaxed position. Reclining or lying down feeding will allow the baby to better control the process. In this position, the baby sets the rhythm of feeding himself and can always raise his head to take a break if the milk is released too quickly. Don't forget to put a towel over to soak up spilled milk.
  • Release pressure. If full breasts make you uncomfortable, try expressing some milk by hand or with a breast pump, but try to express as little milk as possible. Every time you empty your breast, you send a signal to her to produce even more milk. Therefore, pumping provides short-term relief, but with prolonged use, it can only aggravate the situation. If you need to express and store milk to feed your baby when you are not around, it is best to address the excess production first.
  • Try bra pads. If you have milk leaks, put special pads or pads in your bra to collect milk* to keep your underwear dry. If your milk leakage is moderate and already decreasing, or your breasts leak slightly during pregnancy, ultra-thin disposable pads will help you feel confident in any life situation.
  • Avoid teas and lactation supplements. If you have been drinking teas, eating special biscuits, or taking supplements to improve breast milk production, this should be stopped now to resolve the problem.

"Breast Watch" to reduce milk production

If all the above methods fail, you can try a technique called "Breast Watch", which allows you to better control milk production. However, before trying this method, check with a lactation consultant or healthcare provider.

On breastfeeding, you feed your baby on demand, but only on one breast for four hours. The second breast during this time is strongly filled. Since breast milk contains what is known as a "feedback lactation inhibitor", due to overfullness, the body sends a signal to that breast to slow down milk production. This is a natural way to protect the breast from endless filling.

This technique must be applied for 24 hours, changing breasts every four hours. If the milk does not become less, try increasing the duration of the "watch" to six hours.

Complete emptying and “breast duty” technique

If after another day there is still a lot of milk produced,
you can try another version of this technique, which is recommended in cases of extreme overabundance. It is called "complete emptying and duty of the breast." 3

In this method, both breasts must be completely emptied in the morning with an electric breast pump and the baby should be fed immediately. The flow of milk will be weaker and allow the baby to eat calmly. In addition, he will receive more fat-rich milk, which comes at the end of feeding, which means he will feel more full.

After that, you can continue the "breast watch" for four hours, as described above. If that doesn't help, try increasing the interval to six, eight, or twelve hours the next day, depending on the extent of the problem. Before using this technique, be sure to consult with your doctor.

You may not need to completely empty your breasts after the first use of this technique, but some mothers have to do this once or twice. Improvement usually occurs within the first two days or a little later, but in no case should "breast watch" be used for more than five days.

Literature

1 Morbacher N. Breastfeeding answers made simple. Amarillo TX , USA : Hale Publishing ; 2010. - Morbacher N., "Simple answers to questions about breastfeeding." Amarillo, Texas, USA: Publishing Hale 0106 et al . Blood and milk prolactin and the rate of milk synthesis in women. Exp Physiol. 1996;81(6):1007-1020. - Cox D.B. et al., Effects of blood and milk prolactin on milk production in women. Exp Physiol. 1996;81(6):1007-1020.

3 van Veldhuizen-Staas CG. Overabundant milk supply: an alternative way to intervene by full drainage and block feeding. Int Breastfeed J . 2007;2(1):11. - van Velhusen-Staas SJ, "Milk Overabundance: An Alternative Countermeasure by Total Drying and Blocking of Feedings." Int Brestfeed J (International Journal of Breastfeeding). 2007;2(1):11.

Read instructions before use. Consult a specialist about possible contraindications.

* RC № FZZ 2010/07352 dated 19.07.2010

Strong milk flow

A baby who gets a lot of milk too quickly can become very cranky, irritable at the breast, and this can be mistaken for "colic". In this case, the child, as a rule, is gaining weight very well.

Usually, a few seconds or minutes after the baby is put to the breast, he begins to cough, arch and turn away. Later, when you try to attach the baby again, the pattern will repeat itself. The baby gets frustrated with the rapid flow of milk, but gets angry when it slows down. This may not be an easy test for everyone. In rare cases, the baby may even refuse to take the breast, which usually occurs at three months of age.