How much milk should a newborn baby eat?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Modern moms are worried about a lot of questions. This little creature that came into the world often becomes a mystery to us. Families, most of which have one or two children, disunity from neighbors and relatives are not conducive to knowing how children develop. Many women hold a baby for the first time only when their own child is born. Knowledge about care and upbringing is often theoretical, and not practical - deducted from books and the Internet. Mothers are anxious - is the baby developing correctly? Many questions exist around infant nutrition. For example, how much milk should a newborn eat?

Breast Attachment

In modern maternity hospitals, it is customary to put the baby to the breast after childbirth. This useful and natural rule was developed thanks to the research of pediatricians and psychologists. The former testify to the benefits of feeding for the body of a newly born child, the latter to the benefits of this contact with the mother for the psyche. The psychological significance lies in the fact that before birth, the baby exists in an inextricable connection with the mother. He is inside herbodies, mother and fetus are one.

The mother's body is the first "universe" of the baby. He sees a faint light penetrating through the stretched abdominal wall, hears the sounds of the mother's blood circulation and peristalsis, picks up her voice, swims in the intrauterine waters. At the end of pregnancy, the carefree paradise of the mother's womb, where you do not need to eat, breathe and warm yourself, becomes a very cramped cell. The amount of oxygen in the blood drops. It is difficult to say what the unborn fetus wants more - to get out or stay inside at any cost. He doesn't have thoughts like we do yet. In any case, birth is a stressful event. It becomes a break with the mother's world, where the baby spent 9 months. The child should enter a completely different stage of the relationship with the mother.

Forming Attachment

At this stage, he has a huge increase in independence, and at the same time he is totally dependent. The life support inside the body passes outside, and the bodily connection is replaced by a psychological one. The baby develops a bond. And breastfeeding is not the last moment. Breastfeeding has a lot in common with feeding through the umbilical cord. The baby receives nutrients from the mother's body, he feels a warm stream of milk that enters his mouth, presses against the mother's body. Even in an adult, emotions are often expressed through the body. Many of us love affection. And for a newborn, there are no more abstract ways of expressing feelings and affection. He feels everything with his body.

Why breastfeed right away?

The benefits of breastfeeding in the first few days of life for a child's body have a slightly different explanation. How much milk a newborn baby should eat is not a completely correct question, if we talk about the first days of life. After all, he eats not quite milk. A few days before giving birth, colostrum may already start to come out of a woman's breasts. After childbirth, its amount can be about a teaspoon per feeding. Very little? But this is enough for a newborn. Colostrum is thicker than milk, so it is much more nutritious. It contains a lot of proteins and fats. This natural nutrient mixture has a yellowish color and a slightly s alty taste. Colostrum contains many useful nutrients, and also contributes to the formation of the baby's immunity - it contains mother's antibodies to various pathogens.

What are mothers afraid of?

Why is the question of how much milk a newborn should eat so relevant? Mothers are afraid that the baby will not receive enough nutrition. It is less common for breastfeeding to be unnecessary, but breastfeeding is the exception rather than the rule. Overfeeding is more common with artificial feeding, tk. the mixture may not be properly diluted with water and be too thick, besides, it is very easy to drink from the bottle. Sometimes too large a hole in the bottle leads to the fact that the child simply does not notice the amount of formula drunk. breast sucking demandsmore time and effort, milk is not always released immediately, so the likelihood of overfeeding is much less. However, how to determine if there is underfeeding? How much milk should a newborn eat and will he get enough of what he receives when feeding? Many women worry that they don't have enough milk.

When a child is malnourished

How many grams of milk a newborn should eat is not the only indicator. The baby is hungry or full - this can be determined by his behavior. He althy children with a normal appetite usually express hunger with violent indignation. This is one of the main vital needs, so the child will not calm down after feeding, but will cry and scream, pull his hands to his mouth, showing with all appearance that he did not have enough. Sometimes babies breastfeed for a very long time - up to one and a half to two hours. This is not always related to the need for food. Sometimes, when the milk has already been drunk, the very process of sucking calms the child, gives him a state of comfort. After a while, the baby may fall asleep.

A child who eats enough is consistently gaining weight and growing hair and nails. In this case, you do not have to worry about how much milk the newborn should eat. His body knows perfectly well what it needs. Over time, a baby who has enough food becomes more active and begins to show a keen interest in the world. True, for newborns, the last sign is not yet decisive - these babies are only adapting to a new, complex and dangerous world for them. Exploratory behavior will appearlater.

Weight loss

Baby should gain weight. If the weight does not grow or falls, he urgently needs supplementary feeding. Is this always true? No, especially when it comes to newborns. Almost all babies lose weight after birth. And that's completely normal! If weight loss does not exceed 5-8% of body weight, you should not worry. Weight loss is not due to a decrease in the subcutaneous fatty membrane, but to other reasons. Firstly, for several months in the already working intestines of the baby, the original feces - meconium - accumulated. What is this mass of a dark and even greenish hue formed from? While in the womb, the baby is already training nutrition skills. He swallows amniotic fluid. Since the fetus itself is in them, dead cells and thin hairs get there from its skin - lanugo, which fall out by birth. Fluids, sugars, and other nutrients from the mother's body are digested in the baby's body. Water is excreted in urine through the kidneys. And hairs, skin particles, dead intestinal cells, bile secreted by the liver accumulate until birth. The weight of the newborn is not so great that it could not be affected by a bowel movement. In addition, the newborn in the body has an increased fluid content. This helps him to pass through the birth canal more easily, protects from injury. After birth, excess fluid leaves the body and also carries away those same grams. And the baby is still eating a little. The digestive system is not working at full capacity, the body is only adapting to the new environment.

First week

How much milk should a newborn eat in the first days of his life? If the baby starts feeding with just a teaspoon of colostrum, then by the week the amount drunk can increase several times. Immediately after birth, a child can suck out only 7-10 g at a time, and at a week of age - already up to 50-80 ml at a time. How can this be determined? The breast is not a bottle on which there are divisions with numbers … The method is quite simple. Weigh the baby before and after feeding. Subtract the first result from the last result to get the difference. This difference in weight before and after will be the weight of the milk you drink.

Some mothers, knowing how many ml of breast milk a newborn should eat, begin to worry about why he eats so little? The baby's stomach has hard, inelastic walls. It will expand soon. But if the baby drinks more milk than can fit in his stomach, he will vomit. There will be no benefit from such extra food.

Birth to month

And how many ml of milk should a newborn eat per day? The daily portion of colostrum, and then milk, in the first days of life should be about 100 g. For this, it is worth feeding the baby at least 12 times a day. By the week, the daily portion increases to 450 g of milk.

Well, how much milk should a newborn eat per month? Ten times more than after birth! For one feeding, he can consume up to 120 ml of milk, and up to 600 ml per day.

On schedule or on demand?

Doctors advise feedingbaby on demand. This is useful both for the mother's lactation and for the psychological state of the baby. He still does not know how to wait and endure, and hunger for him is tantamount to the threat of death. Feeding on demand is helpful, but can be inconvenient because you need to be ready to take a break from work at any time. Therefore, some women choose to feed by the hour. With a regular regimen, the baby will also not suffer from severe hunger if the feeding schedule is organized correctly. For this, it is not even important how much breast milk a newborn should eat at a time, but how many times and at what interval to feed. In the first month, a newborn should be fed at least 10-12 times a day, and the interval between feedings should not be more than 2 hours.