When a child uses mother's milk, you don't really need to worry about nutrition, it's just that mothers should feed the baby when he wants. But if the baby is bottle-fed, you need to consider some of the nuances of feeding him.
A breastfed baby eats when he wants to, and parents just need to watch how often the baby wets and stains the diapers. It is enough to weigh it 1 or 2 times a month. But when a baby begins to bottle-feed formula milk, careful monitoring is needed for his feeding. It is necessary to monitor the child's nutrition, the dosage of the formula and the intervals of meals.
How much formula should my baby take?
It is quite easy to calculate how much mixture to give to the child per day and how much to give at each feeding. There are many different ways. If you calculate by the age of the child, an eight-week-old baby needs to consume 800 ml of milk per day. If your baby is less than eight weeks old, you need to give 50 ml less formula.
And if the child is older than eight months, every month the volume of the mixture should be increased by 50 ml.
You can also calculate the volume of the mixture by the weight of the child. During the first weeks of life, a child should consume 1/5 of his body weight per day. Over the next 2 months, already 1/6 part, if he is from 3 to 5 months - 1/7 of the body weight, and during the second half of the year, the baby needs 1/8 part.
There is a technique that will help you calculate your nutrition, knowing your body weight and height. The formula is this: you need to divide the weight in grams by the height in centimeters and multiply everything by 7.
According to another method, you can calculate the calorie content. A child under the age of three months needs 125 calories per 1 kg of his weight.
Baby from 3 to 6 months - 110 calories per 1 kg. And from 6 to 12 months - 100-90 calories per 1 kg of weight.
How to tell if a child is full?
For all the time that the child eats, he eats a different amount of the mixture. And the baby's appetite may not be constant. And therefore, when artificial feeding begins, it is recommended to use free feeding sometimes. As a result, the child eats when he wants, but the mother must keep track of the amount of food eaten at one time. Pour 15-20 ml more of the mixture into the bottle and give at the set time, deviating from the schedule by at least 30 minutes. And when the child is full, do not force the rest to drink. To understand whether the child is full or not, you need to determine how much the child needs to eat the mixture per day and how much is needed for one feeding. But when your child demands food earlier than the established schedule, you should recalculate the amount of formula you give the child.
