Modern moms are worried about a lot of questions. This little creature that has come into the world often becomes a mystery to us. Families, most of which have one or two children, disunity from neighbors and relatives do not have to know how children develop. Many women hold their baby for the first time only when their own baby is born. Knowledge of care and upbringing is often theoretical, and not practical - read from books and the Internet. Anxiety awaits mothers - is the baby developing correctly? Many questions exist around infant nutrition. For example, how much milk should a newborn eat?
Chest
In modern maternity hospitals, it is customary to apply the baby to the chest after childbirth. This useful and natural rule has been developed through research by pediatricians and psychologists. The first ones testify to the benefits of feeding the body of only a born child, the second ones indicate the benefits of this contact with mom for the psyche. The psychological significance is that before birth, the baby exists in an inextricable connection with the mother. He is inside her body, mother and fetus are one.
The maternal organism is the first “universe” of the baby. He sees the faint light penetrating through the stretched abdominal wall, he hears the sounds of blood circulation and peristalsis of the mother, picks up her voice, swims in the fetal 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 cage. The amount of oxygen in the blood drops. It is difficult to say what the unborn baby wants more - to get out or stay inside at all costs. He still does not have thoughts, such as ours. In any case, birth is a stressful event. It becomes a break with the mother world, where the baby spent 9 months. The child must go to a completely different stage in his relationship with his mother.
Attachment Formation
At this stage, he has a huge increase in independence, and at the same time he is totally dependent. Life support inside the body goes outside, and bodily communication is replaced by psychological. The baby is forming attachment. And breastfeeding is not the last moment. Breastfeeding has much in common with eating through the umbilical cord. The baby receives nutrients from the mother’s body, he feels a warm stream of milk that enters his mouth, is pressed against the mother’s body. Even in an adult, emotions are often expressed through the body. Many of us love affection. And for the newborn, there are still 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 the baby's body have a slightly different explanation. How much milk a newborn child should eat is not a completely correct question when it comes to the first days of life. After all, he eats not quite milk. A few days before birth, colostrum may already begin to stand out from the woman’s chest. After childbirth, its amount can be about a teaspoon in one feeding. Very little? But this is enough for the newborn. Colostrum is thicker than milk, so it is much more saturated with nutrients. It contains a lot of proteins and fats. This natural nourishing mixture has a yellowish color and a slightly salty taste. Colostrum carries a lot of useful nutrients, and also contributes to the formation of the baby’s immunity - it contains the mother’s antibodies to various pathogens.
What do mothers fear?
Why is the question so relevant about how much milk a newborn should eat? Moms are afraid that the baby will not get enough nutrition. Less commonly, feeding is unnecessary, but breastfeeding is the exception rather than the rule. Overfeeding is more likely to occur with artificial feeding, as the mixture may not be properly diluted with water and be too thick, and it’s very easy to drink from a bottle. Sometimes too large a hole in the bottle leads to the fact that the child simply does not notice the amount of the mixture drunk. Breast sucking requires more effort and time, milk is not always excreted 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 is it enough for him to get what he gets when feeding? Many women worry that they do not have enough milk.
When a child is malnourished
How many grams of milk a newborn should eat is not the only indicator. A baby is hungry or full - this can be determined by its behavior. Healthy children with normal appetite usually express hunger with violent indignation. This is one of the main vital needs, therefore, the child will not calm down after feeding, but will cry and scream, pull the handles to his mouth, showing with all appearance that he was not enough. Sometimes babies suckle 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 milk is already drunk, the process of sucking calms the baby, gives him a state of comfort. After some time, the baby may fall asleep.
A child who eats enough, is steadily gaining weight, his hair and nails are growing. In this case, you don’t have to worry about how much milk a newborn should eat. His body himself knows very well what he needs. Over time, the baby, who is 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 only adapt to a new, complex and dangerous world for them. Exploratory behavior will come later.
Weight loss
The kid must gain weight. If the weight does not increase 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 this is completely normal! If weight loss does not exceed 5-8% of body weight, do not worry. Weight loss is caused not by a decrease in the subcutaneous fatty membrane, but by other reasons. Firstly, for several months in the already working intestines of the baby, primordial stool - meconium was accumulated. What makes up this mass of dark and even greenish tint? Being in the womb, the baby is already training nutritional skills. He swallows amniotic fluid. Since the fetus itself is located in them, dead skin cells and thin hairs - lanugo, which fall to birth, fall there from its skin. Liquid, sugars, other nutrients that have fallen from the mother’s body are digested in the baby’s body. Water is excreted in the urine through the kidneys. And hairs, particles of skin, dead cells of the intestine, bile secreted by the liver accumulate until birth. The weight of the newborn is not so great that it can not be affected by bowel movement. In addition, a newborn in the body has an increased fluid content. This helps him easier to pass through the birth canal, protects against injuries. After birth, excess fluid leaves the body and also carries away those very grams. And the baby is still eating a little. The digestive system does not work at full strength, the body only adapts to the new environment.
First week
How much milk should a newborn eat in the first days of his life? If a baby starts eating with just a teaspoon of colostrum, then by the week the volume of drink can increase several times. Immediately after birth, the baby can suck out only 7-10 g at a time, and at a weekly age - already up to 50-80 ml at a time. How can this be determined? The chest is not a bottle on which there are divisions with numbers ... The method is quite simple. You need to weigh the baby before and after feeding. Subtract the first from the last result, get the difference. This difference in weight before and after will be the weight of the milk consumed.
Some mothers, knowing how many ml of breast milk a newborn should eat, begin to worry about why he eats so little? The stomach of the baby has solid inelastic walls. He will soon be stretched. But if a child drinks more milk than is placed in his stomach, he will burp it. There will be no benefit from such excess food.
From 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 rises 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.
By mode or by demand?
Doctors advise feeding the baby on demand. This is useful for lactation of the mother, 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. On-demand feeding is useful, but it can be inconvenient because you need to be ready at any time to break away from business. Therefore, some women choose feeding 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 important not even 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 of the newborn, you need to feed at least 10-12 times a day, and the interval between feedings should not be more than 2 hours.