Drinking amount for your baby: How often a bottle?

If your baby has just been born, it is still tiny and looks very fragile. It is of course clear that you are particularly concerned, especially during the first months of life, whether your child is drinking enough milk so that it can grow and thrive. But don’t worry: as long as your baby appears active and alert, it is usually not undersupplied. However, if you are still unsure whether your baby is drinking enough, you can find out here about approximate guide values ​​for how often you should give your baby the bottle and how much milk it needs per day.

What amount to drink for your baby?

In the following you will find detailed information on how your child’s milk requirements change in the first months of life and the reasons for these changes.

How often do newborns drink? Lots of small meals

In the first few weeks after the birth, you can primarily adjust the bottle-giving to the desires of your baby. Fixed times for feeding or limiting bottle feeds to a certain number do not make sense at this age. Since pre milk is as runny as breast milk and only contains lactose as a carbohydrate, you don’t have to worry about overfeeding your child. Feeding as needed is therefore no problem with pre milk. The daily milk requirement of infants usually increases gradually within the first week from initially 50 to 70 milliliters (ml) per kilogram of body weight to around 100 to 140 ml. This results in an “average infant” weighing around 4000 gramsapproximate daily drinking amount of 400 to 560 ml . Within the next few weeks, the requirement then increases to 500 to 650 ml per day.

How often does your baby need its bottle during the day and at night?

Since your baby’s stomach is still very small in the first few weeks of life, slightly larger than a ping-pong ball, it can only drink very little milk at each meal. Since these small amounts do not last long and infant milk is usually very easy to digest so as not to put too much strain on the immature gastrointestinal tract, your baby will probably ask for a meal every two to three hours, including at night. About eight meals a day is therefore perfectly normal. From about the third week of life, when the stomach is already a little larger, it may be that the amount of liquid per meal increases slightly and “feeding” is therefore no longer necessary.

From the second month: The meals become larger

After the first four weeks, the amount you drink per meal increases slightly while the number of meals continues to decrease. The milk saturates your baby for longer periods of time. How much milk a baby needs during this time varies from child to child and depends not insignificantly on body size and metabolism. However, a rough rule of thumb is: around 150 ml per kilogram of body weight, but no more than one liter per day in total.

An example: If your three-month-old baby weighs five kilos, then it needs 5 × 150 ml, i.e. 750 ml of milk per day. If you break this up into six meals, each bottle will hold around 125ml.

With the introduction of supplementary food around the fifth month, milk meals gradually decrease, since your baby satisfies its hunger with other foods and drinks other liquids in addition to milk. From about the sixth month of life, when your baby has established a fixed day-night rhythm, it can sometimes do without a bottle at night.

What if the baby doesn’t get enough?

In principle, you can feed your baby with pre milk for the entire first year of life. It is not absolutely necessary to switch to follow-on milk, as Pre-Milk contains all the important nutrients and from the fifth month onwards the milk is supplemented by supplementary food anyway. However, if your child’s daily drinking amount exceeds one liter per day over a longer period of time , it is possible that the current formula will no longer fill you up. In such a case, switching to a different milk can help. In the case of food that is not labeled Pre, you should then follow the dosage information on the packaging as closely as possible to prevent overfeeding your baby. You can find out more about the different types of milk food in our article ” Bottles: Which milk for the baby?” “.

Deviations in the drinking quantity are possible in both directions

Despite all your concerns about whether your child is getting enough milk, you shouldn’t drive yourself crazy . The values ​​given above are for guidance only and represent a rough overview of the average needs of babies of different age groups. Deviations in both directions are therefore quite normal, since every baby develops individually and the metabolism of every child works differently. For example, if your baby is going through a growth spurt, they’re likely to be drinking significantly more than usual. Even in summer, your child will ask for a bottle more often, as it loses more fluid through sweating and is thirsty more often.

Babies usually have a very reliable sense of how much food they need. They usually let themselves know when they are hungry and stop drinking when they are full. For this reason, you should never force your baby to empty the bottle completely if it signals that it does not want to continue drinking. If a baby drinks a little less than usual one day, there is a high probability that it will make up for it the next day. So don’t worry too much if you bottle feed more or less than you planned. As long as your baby is growing and developing well, there is nothing to worry about.