Transcript:
*We apologize for any typos, misspellings or incorrect grammar. Our transcript is auto-generated by software that’s trying its best, just like all of us.*
Welcome to the Milk Minute Podcast everybody, sleepover edition. Welcome back, we are talking about overfeeding your baby from a bottle today. Yeah, I think people in general worry with all of the hubbub online that they are not bottle feeding correctly because there’s a lot of opinions out there and Of course, because we’re human beings and not robots, and your baby has this whole oral situation going on that might be different from your last baby or any baby you’ve ever babysat.
We have to kind of meet your baby where they’re at. So we’re going to talk about that today. But first we have a question from I hope she’s a listener. I don’t know if she is. Someone on our Facebook group. I’m going to leave her anonymous because I’m pulling her question randomly out of the Facebook group.
But she says, how long can I go in between pump sessions without hurting my supply? I have an 11 month old baby and I’m traveling for work. I always try to pump every three hours, but I may have to go longer on this trip. You know, with an 11 month old, every three hours is probably more than you need. But we do have an episode on breast milk storage capacity, something like that.
We’ll, we’ll link it down below that talks about kind of the details of this, because it is individual to you and your baby’s age. However, if you change how often you pump for like one day and then go back to your normal schedule, it will probably be fine. Yeah, our body doesn’t really respond to one offs, which is super nice because if that were the case, the first time your baby slept through the night, you’d have no milk.
So, yeah, your body requires clear, consistent messages in order for it to change, and the pressure that you feel build up over long periods of time between pumping is what starts to kill the milk making cells. But we have a lot of wiggle room with an 11 month old, you know, and also you have to decide how much you care.
Do you have milk in the freezer still? You know, do you even feel full anymore? How many hours does it take for you to feel full? I personally chose to stop carrying at 11 months. I think that was a good choice for you. Yeah. Third baby energy. Okay. All right. Well, we wish you the best of luck on your trip and we hope you have a good time.
We have a special guest sitting here. at the Sleepover Edition. Mary, how are you doing? Hi, everyone. I’m doing great. I just want to let you know, Mom, you’re doing a fantastic job. Thanks, Mary. This is why Mary works at my clinic now. Mary works at the clinic. We love her. I do still ask you things you don’t know, and I will keep asking you things you don’t know every day I’m there.
Yeah, so Mary is my brother Josiah’s girlfriend. Josiah, say hello. He’s the cutest ever. We’re 16 years apart, and he’s my little buddy. He was my first baby, really. Yeah, oldest, oldest sibling. Yeah, I used to take him to the mall in a stroller and everyone would look at me judgmentally and be like, that poor teen mom.
So, yeah, you’re welcome. And Mary, Just got into PA school. So we’re very excited for her, but she doesn’t start for like, I don’t know, six or eight months or something. So she’s going to work as a medical assistant at the office and she’s going to soak up the vibes of our clinic. Hopefully only the good ones.
And we’re super thankful to have her. So Mary question, were you bottle fed or breastfed? My answer is both. My mom said that I was breastfed for the first five months and then I was bottle fed. And was that stressful for you? I don’t remember. Hear that guys? Podcast episode over. Your baby’s not going to remember.
Mary comes through again, in the clutch, making everyone feel so much better about themselves. Okay, Josiah, I used to bottle feed you. And you know what we used to do? We had a routine. Do you remember? Every day I would get off the bus and I would come in and mom would hand you to me with a full ass bottle.
And it was a Playtex bottle, like the old school kind. Oh yeah, full, like 8 to 12 ounce bottle with the plastic Playtex. bag inside the bottle. Huh. And you could stick your hand up in it and you could squeeze all the air out and it was. I remember. Very unnecessary but also incredibly satisfying. Yeah.
And then I would put on Oprah and I would put my legs up on the coffee table and I’d put you on my legs and you’d stare at me while I’d watch Oprah and I’d feed you a gigantic bottle of breast In retrospect, way too much breast milk. So. And I did ask mom recently, how long you breastfed and she said nine months.
And I said, what happened? And she said, he was just ready. And I’m like, it could have been the eight ounce bottles. It probably was, you know I don’t really remember that. I’m still pretty healthy, I’d like to think. Do you feel like we have a special bond because of those compounded moments of bottle feeding together?
Yeah, you know, I think that might have been the first real bonding experience that I had with you. And I know we’re pretty good friends here today. So, well, let me tell you what came on after Oprah. It was the Christopher Lowell show. Do you remember that queen? I love that guy. My mom swore he was not gay.
She was like, no, he’s married. I was like, it’s an interior decorating show. Anyways, loved it. Shaped me as a person. Thanks for being born and teaching me how to bottle feed a baby. Okay, let’s just take a quick break to thank a sponsor. The sponsor today is The Brownie House, and you can order a gourmet box of brownies and have it shipped to anyone in the nation or internationally by going to yesbrownies.com.
You can build your own brownie box. You can pick all raspberries. You can do a wide assortment. They even have brookies, which is a brownie if you didn’t know that. It’s Wonderful. What better gift to give with the holidays approaching? Okay, moving into overfeeding with a bottle. So, Maureen, in your experience, who are the patients that are coming to you that you are actually concerned are overfeeding with a bottle?
Yeah, for the most part, it’s usually with newborns. And often I see this when we’ve had like some weight gain trouble to begin with and we finally started supplementing with whatever we’re supplementing with and those babies get hungry, right? They move from that so sleepy they can’t eat phase to like, Suddenly having hunger cues.
I’m playing catch up now. Right. And there’s panic mode in the house. And we really didn’t learn how to bottle feed maybe before we started. And then I see those folks in the office and they’re like, well my nine day old is having five ounce bottles. And I’m like, could you repeat that for me? Yeah, so that, let’s just start by saying what the number of ounces would be that is absolutely too much for a breastfed baby, no matter the age?
Well, let’s say in general, we have a guideline, right? Our general guideline for most breastfed babies, they’re going to top out at four ounces. Some are going to do a little bit more, some are going to do a little bit less. That’s the average. However, if you’re getting to that point and you’re like, I think we need five ounce bottles, that’s a good time to phone a friend.
Mm hmm. When we get to the five ounce mark, I definitely have some questions, especially if the baby has five ounce bottles. a lot of spit up. So if we, if we see that the baby’s super fussy and then the mom’s like, so I, or anyone is like, I think they’re fussy because they’re hungry and then they feed them again.
And then the baby throws up everything. And really the baby might just be fussy because their tummy hurts and they’re over full. Yeah, I mean, usually my follow up questions are like, okay, five ounce bottles. How much are you pumping? Are you pumping five ounces? Every time you pump or, you know, how often is your baby eating?
Do they spit up after the eating? Cause I occasionally see a case where a breastfed baby appropriately is eating a five or six ounce bottle and it’s matching what mom pumps. They’re eating them every like four hours or something. And I’m like, all right. And that means she has to have a large milk storage capacity.
And they’re used to getting a little bit drowned at the breast. If the baby is eating six or seven times a day instead of eight to ten, and their weight gain is perfectly fine, they are absolutely transferring four or five ounces at the breast every single time. And that mom’s breast can keep up with it.
Now, if there’s a mismatch, Not so much. So if you are pumping no more than three ounces ever, your baby, probably if you gave them a five ounce bottle would take it, they’d be a little spitty epi, but then you’re going to find yourself chasing that milk supply always because you just don’t have that milk storage capacity, which is fine.
There’s a wide range of normal. Yeah. And, and I tried to find if we have an exact number for how long it takes for infants to feel full after they’ve eaten enough. We don’t have a great number, but like in general, you know, for adults, it’s like 20 to 30 minutes after eating is sometimes, it’s usually when those like satiated vibes get from your stomach to your brain.
And the Papers that I read mentioned a similar time frame for infants, but I don’t know how we would prove that. Like, I don’t know, are we like going to the infants and we’re like, so do you feel full now? You know, so it might be a little bit less than that. However, we do know that that happens, right? To all humans is that we have lag time between when our bellies tell us we’re full and when our brain understands it and actually tells us to stop eating.
I recommend just to tack on to that. A 10 minute break. If you pump three and a half ounces almost every time, start with three or three and a half ounces in a bottle and then take a 10 minute break. And if after 10 minutes that baby is still like hand to mouth movements, rooting, give them another half ounce.
Yeah. Give them another ounce. Yeah. You know, and it’s okay. And by the way, in the beginning, people hesitate to do this because they don’t want to waste breast milk. Right. But you will end up wasting it in vomit. You will. No, and, and really like. When I see older babies eating large bottles, I’m not too worried.
I’m like, well, you’ve probably figured it out by then. It’s really the babies under three months. Mm hmm. That when I hear they’re having these large bottles, and really in the first two weeks, if someone’s doing like three ounces, I’m like, well, let’s make sure that’s not too much because your baby’s to me.
used to be really tiny and stretched really fast. How’s their weight? Are they gaining really well? And, you know, we can work those babies back down a little bit, which feels so counterintuitive, especially if you’ve had a weight problem and you’re like, I just got them gaining weight well. And we come around and we say, yes, and now they have a cushion and they’re fine.
And it’s okay to only feed them two ounces at once. And we, our patients look at us like we are crazy when we say that. I mean, on average, I would say 90 percent of my patients are doing three to four ounces in a bottle per feed after two weeks. Yeah. Every baby kind of gets to that point at a different time.
Yeah. I think like, usually I tell people, your baby by the kind of the latest it takes is about a month to get there. And by about a month, pretty much every baby is at like that average of like 25 ounces per 24 hours or a little bit more. And I would say that’s probably the, the kids that take a little longer to get there.
NICU babies, so preemies babies under five pounds, like that five pound mark is tough. Like their tummies are just going to be smaller. It’s going to take them a while to get to those bigger feeds. So we’re, we’re following our baby’s cues. And for those type A people out there that clicked on this, that were like, I’m going to get some hard data today.
I apologize, I realize that breastfeeding is like the most annoying thing for you. It truly like, don’t watch the clock, watch the baby. I really had to tell a dad that today, where he was like, I really love breastfeeding except I just want to know how much she’s eating, and I was like, I do understand that.
Yeah, you and all of you. And here’s the thing though, breastfed babies exclusively directly at the breast are very used to getting different amounts all the time. So usually in the morning we have more milk. That’s just the way it is hormonally most of the time. So they’ll have possibly a four and a half ounce feed in the morning.
Maybe at most, maybe five. I’ve seen the most I’ve ever seen in a weighted feed is six ounces. Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that much. I have seen it once and I was shocked. I weighed the baby three times just to make sure. I know when I put him down and I’m like that, I feel like that scale came to a decision too quickly.
I’m going to try that again. Yeah. And I was like, you weren’t pushing off the wall, were you? You know, but no, that is the most I’ve ever seen. It was one baby, one time. And it made sense because the mom had a huge milk storage capacity. Yeah, I think the most I’ve ever seen was mom came in with, I don’t know, a nine month old or something that was only spending like three minutes at the breast.
And I was like, let’s just do a weighted feed since you’re concerned that baby drank five ounces in Yeah. We’re like, guess we’re all set here. Right. And I was like, I’m not worried. Janet, take the gifts that are given. You don’t have to be either. It is really just those new, new babies where I get worried that once we’ve started the trend of just adding more and more and more to the bottle, that we’re not going to stop.
And we are going to be a month old drinking eight ounces, right? Or. A lot of times it’s moms that maybe it’s their second or third baby, and they’ve only formula fed their first babies. And it’s confusing because you do tend to increase the formula volume over time, but you don’t need to increase the breast milk.
And let me explain. Why? Formula takes longer to digest. So it’s going to take your baby much longer to digest three ounces of formula than three ounces of breast milk. And when they start spacing out their feeds like that, we lose the ability to even get eight to 10 feeds in a day. So we end up more like at six feeds a day, six or seven.
And then when we do that, we have to increase the volume. to make sure we’re getting 30 to 35 ounces of formula a day. And it has to be 30 to 35 because formula is always the same calorie. Yeah. Breast milk changes calorie as the day goes on. Right. So and as your baby gets older. So by the time your baby’s eight months old, if they’re formula fed, they might only be eating five bottles a day.
Which means they’re getting six to seven ounce bottles. And then suddenly you have another baby and you’re like, I’m going to breastfeed this one. And you just naturally think that you’re going to increase that volume. But then you pump at work and you pump three ounces and you’re like, Ruh roh, what’s going to happen?
And it’s a time mismatch. It is. And it’s, it’s a hard mental, like framework to change. And when we get stuck in that pattern of ever increasing bottles, bottles. You know, usually my first step is, okay, we’re going to slow those feeds down and let your baby’s normal process of feeling full happen. earlier in the bottle.
And it sometimes takes a little bit of time, right? Cause we have stretched out that belly. It takes some time for them to get used to it. But I’m like, even if we’re feeding the same amount, we’re going to do it slower. Yeah. You know, everyone’s had that stomach virus. Helps them lose all that weight they’ve been trying to lose.
Right. And then, you can’t eat anything, and then when you go to reintroduce food, your stomach is shrank, and we can’t eat that much at first. Right, we have to build up to it. We gotta build up to it. But, if you weren’t sick, it’d be pretty darn hard to go on a diet. That’s why diets are so hard. Everybody knows this is why diets are so hard.
So, I don’t always feel like we need to actually reduce our bottle size, but I want to stop that. the exponential increase. Right. So we’re going to make those bottles last longer. It’s usually like paste feeding or taking breaks during feeding, whatever that looks like. And that’s a good first step. And then we kind of see how baby tolerates that.
I’m like, okay, that five ounce bottle you’re giving your two week old, let’s make that take 30 minutes and see what happens. And if your baby falls asleep three ounces in, okay, no problem. And can you put it back in Just feed it again in two hours. Yeah, I wouldn’t push it too far, but I mean, I’m not, I’m not a big fan of throwing breast milk away.
No, but if we’re feeding every two hours, like we probably should be at that age, it’s fine. Yeah. And you might notice that happens, right? How often baby is feeding changes as well, and that’s okay. Right, like that’s the natural sort of way that that would progress. So like, perfect world for you type A people out there.
Where you can’t really go wrong is somewhere between three and four ounces, and the bottle feed takes 10 to 20 minutes. Yeah, that’s kind of what we would like it to take. You know, if it’s taking longer than that, we can probably speed it up a little bit. Yeah, if it’s less than 10 minutes, I would like to drag that out a little bit unless we have like a 10 month old baby, you know.
Yeah, because their brains are like Play Doh. It’s just like trying to set the fullness centers of the brain, trying to set expectations for what this feed is supposed to be like. And if they get that bottle tipped up and they are forced to, like, bong a five ounce bottle in five minutes, their brain is going to be like, I literally saw that in the office today.
I was like, oh, could you show me how you bottle feed? And I was like, okay, I see the problem immediately. That baby’s ready for a rush week. Let’s fix that. Yeah. And you know, I’ve had conversations like this with parents who then kind of say, like, why do we care? Right? Totally valid question because don’t we want our babies to be fat and happy and all that?
Of course we do. So I care if you’re having trouble keeping your breast milk supply up to enough to feed your baby, right? I care if overfeeding is causing your baby pain and discomfort and spit up and blowouts. You know, and we have definitely read some papers and kind of seen some chatter about like allowing children and babies to feel full after meals helps them sort of lifelong with that skill and not sort of like conditioning that feeling out of them and having, you know, kids used to feeling just over full all the time.
It’s sort of like low on my priority list, you know, but like it’s there. Preventing bottle preference. Yeah. Because that’s real too. Like if the baby has to work harder at the breast because they will. Yes. Because they have to use all their facial muscles and their chest muscles and back muscles to hold a breast in with their tongue and lips and with the bottle they only have to use their cheek muscles.
So if this baby who is so smart and is trying to find the path of least resistance is working Normally, a normal amount of hard on a breast taking 20 minutes total, both breasts to eat. And then you put five ounces in a bottle with a fast flow nipple and they chug it in three minutes. Their brain is going to go, this is the way, Oh, absolutely.
This is the way. And we hear parents say, but they love it. Like, why would I stop it if they love it? And it’s like, okay, you do that enough times. Then when you go to put your baby on the breast, they’re like, no, thanks. This breast is trash. It’s too hard. No, thank you. Yeah. And you know, I think that’s a really good kind of question to follow up for any intervention you want to do with your baby or someone recommends with your baby.
Like, why, why do we care? Because that also. It gives you the motivation behind making changes, can help you figure out how long that change needs to be in your life, you know, what kind of priority it is for you. So this whole episode is not to say you must only feed your breastfed baby four ounces every time, no matter what, but it is to say, Hey, if you’re worried about overfeeding from a bottle, here’s some things to look out for.
Here’s some ways to fix it. And here are some reasons you might care. Yeah, and so let’s do a quick nod to exclusive pumpers So, you know if you’re an exclusive pumper and you’re in the first two weeks just want to acknowledge that that is tricky because You are a step removed from what baby is demanding So it’s not quite this like baby demands it you supply it.
It’s not baby demands something, you guess at how much baby wants in a bottle, and then you pump and you hope that you get that much. So let me take some pressure off of you really quick and remind you that we’re looking for, like, at that age, at the first two weeks, we’re looking for, like, total volume in a day.
It’s okay if you pump one ounce to just feed that baby one ounce, and then they’ll probably be hungry again sooner. Then you pump again, And you maybe get two ounces that time, give two ounces. So we’re looking to, you know, let’s see, like day one of life is probably like three ounces total. Yeah. That they’re getting in a day.
Their tummy size is like 10 milliliters. Yeah. The day they are born. It’s tiny. It’s not very much. By one week of age, we’re looking at probably 10 to 15 ounces of total in a day, would you say? Yeah, each feed like one to two ounces. Yeah, so somewhere between like 10 and 20. And then at two weeks, it’s.
Closer to that 25 to 30 ounce, right? We’re more at two ounces per feed, two and a half ounces per feed. Yeah. So there’s some numbers for you guys if you need them. And it’s okay when you’re exclusively bottle feeding and pumping to not have a four ounce bottle. Every single time, because when you direct breastfeed, it’s different all the time.
Yeah. And, you know, I used to talk to my husband about this and saying like, Hey, it’s okay to offer her one ounce while I’m gone. If you’re just not sure, like she already ate, but you’re not sure if she’s hungry, offer her an ounce or half an ounce and see what happens. And if you need to then thaw another bag into like, Doesn’t matter.
I personally would put like two ounces in every single freaking bag in the freezer. Yep. Because I was like, well, she only eats that in a bottle and we can just crack those suckers in half and then have one ounce, you know. That’s right. Crack them. And also, I have parents that ask me quite a bit, if they don’t get enough, like, I feel like something bad’s gonna happen.
And I’m like, okay, so let’s play this game. Let’s pretend it’s not a baby. Let’s pretend it’s my five year old. And my five year old is like, I’m starving. Right. And I give her a yogurt. And then we’re going to eat dinner in an hour. Yeah. Is she going to starve to death in that one hour after eating a yogurt?
No. No, she’s not. Will she complain about it the whole hour? Absolutely. She might. She might. So your baby, if you accidentally underfeed just a little bit and then you take that break that like 10 to 30 minute break. No baby has ever starved to death in a 10 to 30 minute break doing a check in after eating a decent amount, like one to three ounces, like on the smaller side, but nonetheless food.
And I usually tell folks like, okay, in that time you’re doing a break, like put baby on your chest. Skin to skin, bebop around the house, you know, rocking around, doing that weird, like, random bumping thing babies love. And like Humans love that random bumping thing. And like, if, if they continue to escalate how mad they are, they want more food.
Yeah. If they kind of like, wah, and then like settle down, then they’re like, wah, and settle down, they are probably full. Yeah, and again, we’re not talking about babies that actively have weight gain issues that we’re chasing. These are healthy, fine babies, healthy term babies and their wedding adequate diapers, which means six wet diapers, at least in a 24 hour period that are heavy enough that when dropped from shoulder height, making noise on the, that counts because of the blue line, it confuses people.
The blue line is confusing. I often, when I’m asking about diapers and people just like, don’t really have a good number answer. I’m like, Do you feel like you are always changing a diaper? And if the answer is no, then we probably don’t have enough diapers. And if the answer is yes, it feels like there’s always a dirty diaper, then we for sure have enough.
Yeah. Yeah. So I hope that makes sense to you all. Six ounces is too much. Five ounces is probably too much. Four ounces is great. It’s like Goldilocks. Four ounces is great. A lot of babies will take four ounces. Sometimes you offer four and they leave an ounce in there. You have to make a choice. Put it in the fridge or chuck it.
Marvin never ate four ounces in her entire life. And she’s a big old chunk. She is a huge child. Marty, It was somewhere between three and four all the time. Yeah, Lyra is currently a forty eight pound, three and a half year old, who only ever took exactly two ounces in a bottle. Really? Forever. That is crazy.
But also, she was used to like, I got the calorie milk. Yeah, that is not real. No, it’s not. It’s not real folks. Just what she was used to and she didn’t need more. Her fullness centers were set to two. She just ate often. Yeah. You know, and that worked for you because of your lifestyle. And because that’s all my boobies hold.
Yeah. You know, like that’s how I make milk. That’s how it comes out. Yep. I think the most I ever pumped once was like four ounces combined after I slept for like eight hours. So if your milk storage capacity being on the lower side, if you consistently gave her four to five ounce bottles, she would have to pump twice to make up one feed.
Yeah. And then the chances are good because breast milk digest fast that she will still be hungry against her. And I would have had a big problem to be totally honest. Yeah. She would not have come back to the boob. She would have been like where’s my big bottle? Yeah. She’d be like, give me big Carl.
Yeah. Yeah. But we were just like, I, you know, Ivan and I would talk about it and I’m like, look, as long as her weight is fine, just give her two ounces and we’ll see what happens. There’s a wide range of normal, but I hope we kind of cleared up like what would be abnormal. So yeah, a bottle feed under five minutes, a bottle feed greater than five ounces consistently.
Yeah, not just like every once in a while. You’re like, oh, wow, big boy. But consistently over five would be a little bit much. And a reminder that it is okay to wait ten minutes. before adding more to a bottle. Absolutely. Well, our award in the alcove today goes to every single child somewhere between 1990 and 1999 who managed to breastfeed past six months.
Yeah. Actually, we might want to extend that. Like 1970s to 90s. Yeah, 70s, well 80s. Anytime in the 1900s. Literally, like 80s to like 2010. Like, even when I had Theo in 2013, there was not a lot of resources. Congratulations to all of you and your parents who managed to go beyond six months of breastfeeding.
Yeah. While you were beer bonging your 12 ounce bottles. Yeah, no doubt. And pediatricians were all just like, yep, looks good. You know, they’re all just doing their best. And really, it’s pretty impressive that we have been able to kind of like gather up that cultural knowledge again. And bring it back into families and tell our friends and yeah, that’s one blessing of social media.
I think if you can sift through the bullshit, you’re able to actually get data. Yes. Actual advice from you’re able to find Accurate information for free if you have some degree of media literacy, which is tricky. Yeah. So congratulations everyone. And you know what? For those of you like my brother Josiah, who absolutely chugged huge bottles and still made it nine months of press feeding, great job.
You’re still fine. Yeah, you know, absolutely. It’s still okay. You’re all fine. So if you have been that person Accidentally overfeeding your baby. You’re still fine. You haven’t broken them. Yeah, it’s gonna be okay And at the end of this episode you can ask yourself. How much do you care? Why should you care and should you do anything after that?
Yeah. Hey, what don’t I care about today? So many things. So, so much. So much. Heather’s got three kids. She’s got three kids. She doesn’t care about a lot of things. I’m sprawled out on the floor of my basement right now in a bathrobe with my greasy hair on the top of my head. I don’t have a minute to care.
So, we’re done now. We’re done with that phase of life. Thanks for listening to another episode of The Milk Minute, everybody. The way we change this big system that is not set up for lactating families is to educate ourselves, our friends, and sometimes our providers. If you like this episode or any other episode we have ever made, you can share this podcast with a friend.
You could join our Patreon and give us a little bit of money to keep the show going so other people can get free breastfeeding information. We would love that. And don’t forget to head over to YesBrownies.com and build a brownie box for a loved one for the holidays. Goodbye. Bye bye.
