You’ll often hear about breastfeeding ‘on demand’, or feeding according to your baby’s hunger cues.

Put simply, this means following your baby’s lead and feeding to your baby’s appetite, rather than to a timed schedule.

But what if you are formula feeding? Should you bottle feed your baby to a timed schedule or according to the baby’s need?

Just as with breastfed babies, it’s appropriate to formula feed your baby according to need. This is also true if you bottle feed your baby with expressed breast milk.

In this article, however, we’re discussing bottle feeds using infant formula.

Things to know about infant formula feeding

#1. How often should I feed my baby formula?

Different babies show feeding cues at different time intervals; even for an individual baby, time intervals between one feeding and the next feeding can change from day to day.

Your baby might feed more often during the day, then go longer between feedings at night. In the early days and weeks of a baby’s life when the circadian rhythms are still developing, the opposite could be true and your baby might have longer stretches of sleep during the day.

You can read more about baby’s sleeping patterns in BellyBelly’s article Baby Sleeping Guide | What To Expect.

On average, newborns eat anywhere between 8 and 12 times in a 24-hour period.

#2. How can I tell whether my baby is hungry?

Figuring out when to feed your baby is based on feeding cues. When newborn babies are hungry, they typically show hunger cues, such as stretching, becoming increasingly alert, turning their head from side to side with an open mouth, sticking out the tongue or sucking on their hands.

You can learn more about hunger cues in BellyBelly’s article Baby Hunger Cues | How To Tell If Your Baby Is Hungry.

This might be different if your baby is born early. Premature babies are typically put on a timed feeding schedule, to make sure they get enough milk to grow and thrive.

Regardless of how often your baby feeds, you should wash bottles in hot, soapy water and sterilize them after every use.

#3. How much infant formula should I feed my baby?

On average, after the first week of life until around three month of age, babies need 150 ml of breast milk or formula milk per kilogram of body weight, per day.

How much formula you put in your baby’s bottle will depend on how often your baby feeds.

For example, if your baby weighs 4.5 kg and feeds 8 times every 24 hours, he would need around 85 ml of formula per feed.

This does not necessarily mean that 85 ml is the exact amount of formula your baby will drink at every feed.

If your baby is going through a growth spurt, he might increase the number of feeds in a 24-hour period, or have more formula per feed.

For this reason, it’s helpful to be guided by your baby’s cues as to how much formula he needs and how often he feeds. If your baby is still showing hunger cues after finishing a bottle, you can offer him some more. Conversely, if occasionally your baby doesn’t finish the entire bottle, you shouldn’t try to force him to.

#4. Can infant formula be made in advance?

Infant formula comes as concentrated liquid or powdered formula. In Australia, we typically use the powdered form. When mixing formula with cooled, boiled water, it is recommended to make up each bottle just prior to feeding. If, by following the directions on the tin of powdered formula, you make up more than your baby needs at each feed, you can store the excess amount in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

You will then have a little more infant formula to offer your baby if he continues to show hunger cues after finishing the bottle. You can reheat formula by standing the bottle in a container of hot water until it reaches body temperature (approximately 38C or 98F).

If you start feeding your baby and he doesn’t finish the bottle, any amount of formula that is left over from that feeding should be discarded.

For more formula feeding tips, you can read BellyBelly’s article Bottle Nursing | 6 Steps to Better Bottle Feeding.

#5. How can I tell if my baby is getting enough formula?

It’s considered normal if, occasionally, your baby does not finish the entire bottle during a feeding. Apart from that, your baby should generally be drinking the recommended amount of formula, based on his body weight and the average number of feeds per day.

Other reliable signs that your baby is getting enough milk are:

There is sufficient urine output (at least 5 heavily wet nappies every 24 hours)

He shows consistent weight gain and is meeting all developmental milestones, as expected
He is alert and reasonably contented for some periods of the day.

#6. Can a formula fed baby have too much milk?

When babies are formula fed from a bottle, they cannot control their own intake as well as babies who feed at the breast.

When babies suck at the breast, they have better control over milk flow. They can also be at the breast and not suck at all.

When drinking from a bottle, the firm bottle teat inside a baby’s mouth gives a strong stimulus to suck. When babies suck on a bottle, they get a steady flow of milk, whether they are sucking for comfort or for hunger. The fast and continuous flow of milk from a bottle means that the baby needs to keep swallowing or be flooded with milk.

Nevertheless, you can help your bottle-fed baby to be better able to control how much formula he takes in by using a paced bottle feeding method (also called ‘bottle nursing’).

You can read more about paced bottle feeding and other helpful bottle feeding tips in BellyBelly’s article Paced Bottle Feeding | What Is It?

#7. Unsettled behaviour: does it always mean my baby is hungry?

Just like young breastfed babies, young bottle-fed babies also have periods when they cry a lot and sleep very little. These periods are often more about babies seeking emotional regulation as opposed to being hungry or experiencing stomach pains or colic.

During these times, breastfed babies often cluster feed, which means they have a lot of short feeds close together. Because bottle-fed babies cannot control their intake like breastfed babies can during these periods, trying to settle your bottle-fed baby in ways other than with feeding or offering only small amounts at a time (e.g. about 30 ml). Feeding your bottle-fed baby according to his own individual need by using a paced bottle feeding method helps him get the amount of milk he needs.

You can read more helpful tips in BellyBelly’s article Arsenic Hour SOS For Your Baby – 12 Tips To Cope.

Recommended Reading: