Making Sense of How Much to Feed Your Newborn

Your baby is usually born with stores of energy, and hence can survive without feeding for the first few days after birth. However a mother usually produces the ideal nourishment for her newborn immediately after giving birth, called colostrum. Colostrum is a yellow sticky liquid which is full of antibodies, vitamins and minerals, so it plays a crucial role in building baby’s immune system. It also acts as a laxative of sort to help baby pass out meconium (baby’s first poops) and prevent jaundice.

In the first day after birth, baby’s tummy is still tiny and so in a single feeding, can drink ~5ml (or 1 teaspoon/syringe) of colostrum every 3 hours.

On the second day, the appetite can increase to between 5-15ml per feed (every 3 hours), and if the baby latches well, he/she should be able to get this out of mummy’s breasts.

On Day 3, baby could want between 15-30ml per feed (every 3 hours), and this is when mummy might not have enough colostrum to meet the demand, if the milk production has not kicked in yet (milk usually “comes in” sometime between Days 3-5). As such, many babies often cry for milk before 3 hours is up. If baby does not get sufficient colostrum or milk needed to pee or poop out sufficient amounts of broken down bilibrubin, the build-up of bilibrubin in the blood results in jaundice. While I’m a breastfeeding-advocate, I usually do advise parents to allow for a feed of formula milk whenever baby cries for milk before 3 hours is up, simply to avoid the baby having too high jaundice levels.

On Day 4, baby’s appetite increases further to 30-45ml per feed (every 3 hours). It might be possible that mummy might not be able to produce enough to meet this yet as well, though baby should definitely latch for as long as possible to try to encourage greater milk production. As such, for the same reason above, I usually do advise parents to top up the feed after latching with between 15-45ml to ensure baby gets enough to pee and poop sufficiently to keep jaundice levels at bay. This is also important to keep baby full enough till the next feed 3 hours later.

On Day 5, baby should be drinking between 45-60ml every 3 hours. Milk production should have kicked in by this day, but it might take another day or two for mummy to be producing 60ml every 3 hours, so there might be a need to continue topping up 15-45ml after nursing at each feed.

From Day 6 onwards, baby’s milk intake every 24hours should be roughly his/her body weight x 150ml. Eg. if baby weighs 3.5kg at that time, he/she should be drinking between 60-75ml every 3 hours (3.5kg x 150ml/8feeds).

After baby regains the birth weight (usually between days 8-12), baby usually drinks between 600-800ml every 24hours. As baby’s tummy continues to grow larger as the weeks go by, they gradually feed fewer times a day, eg. 90ml 8 times a day, 120ml 6 times a day, or 150ml 5 times a day.

The table below summarises how much your baby needs every feed for easy reference: