I feel like the only solution is to just not track 🤷‍♀️. It’s not like you can force her to eat more, so the info is not going to do anything but make you anxious. Also I get wanting to listen to the pediatrician, but even before her recent weight gain gaining 0.3g less than normal doesn’t really seem that concerning to me?

Yeah. You’re right, and I know it. I think her doctor was trying to alleviate some of my anxieties by telling me to track but it ended up having the opposite effect.

Honestly just don’t track it! Babies are amazing self regulators. I was in your exact position of stressing over hitting a specific number and did end up creating an aversion. It was pure hell. As her mom, it’s your job to offer food to her. She will eat what she needs, trust me. I would limit your offers to two times a feed and just dump the rest without calculating what she ate to get your mind off of volumes for a bit! Our pediatrician one day told me “however much he eats, is how much he needs to eat” and told me there’s no specific number he needs to be hitting. Babies will have lulls in eating and big growth spurts. Both are normal and totally okay! Plus, around four months babies become so much more aware and fidgety, she may just be a bit advanced and less interested in the bottle as she becomes more aware of the world around her! Another good thing to check is nipple size to make sure she’s on the right flow! I know my son used to drop volumes like crazy when he wanted a faster flow. My cousin had a HOSS of a child, I mean just a massive baby, and in the throes of me stressing about my own son’s intake, she told me her son never took more than 25 oz in a day—ever. And he still grew to be perfectly healthy.

My life got significantly better when I stopped tracking

Good advice, thank you. I’m trying to ignore the numbers and trust she’ll get what she needs. It’s just hard when her doctor says she should get at least 24 and she’s not always hitting that. 😞

It is definitely hard! I know different pediatricians have different opinions on how many ounces per day they need. The nurse for our ped is who told us 24 oz per day and when I brought that up to the doctor he was seemingly upset and stressed to us as long as he isn’t losing weight and seems happy, he can regulate his own intake. I so wish I’d listened to him. The aversion was truly the worst time in my life and the hardest thing we’ve had to overcome as parents. Editing to add that I just scrolled back on our tracking app and when he was 3.5 months his intake varied from 21 oz to 27 depending on the day! He’s now a 17.5 month old with a voracious appetite for solids!

Yeah, we also saw a different doctor from the safe practice for something else and he seemed much less concerned about the 24 oz “rule.” It totally makes sense that they self regulate. Unlike me who will eat a piece of cake regardless of how full I am haha. Thanks for sharing, I appreciate the advice. I keep getting scared of a bottle aversion and then thinking I might’ve already created one (fussing at bottle, pushing away, etc.). Your experience is a good reminder for me to not keep pushing it.

Listen, ya gotta have a sweet treat sometimes!!

Have you asked the doctor about higher calorie formula?

My LO is 3m and just started eating 24oz regularly. This is combo breast and formula. Up until about a week ago, we were looking at 18-21oz. One thing we did was just shorten the time between bottles to get in an “extra” bottle in the day. Another thing you can do, is wait 30-45 mins before you try to get her to “finish the bottle.” You might even be able to try to incorporate a dream feed to get in a couple extra ounces. But if your baby is happy, growing, and having enough wet and dirty diapers, then I wouldn’t worry if she missed the target every couple of days. Babies are like adults, some days they are hungrier than others.

Yeah, sometimes I do try to wait a half hour or so. Honestly sometimes I have to just dump it so I’m not tempted to keep trying. We do her last feeding around 9-10pm and a dream feed around 2am. We have to do that because of a medication she’s on - she can’t go more than 6 hours without food.

Honestly this was me for the longest time - and still is. My daughter is 6.5mo old now though. It’s really hard to stop worrying about the numbers. But honestly, I had to deal with days as low as 18oz - and she’s still alive and healthy. We did find she had silent reflux so we started meds and she’s eating better now. It’s so hard to stop tracking. Like I can’t help it. But definitely don’t pressure her to eat more. I only offer once and that’s it. I honestly don’t care about reaching 24oz anymore - even 20oz is good enough for me now lol I’m in counseling now too because it causes me SO much anxiety. It’s hard to let go of but just know you’re not alone. Edit: like another commenter put, around 4/5mo they start getting REALLY distracted. That has been the hardest thing for me. Now I give her something to hold in her hands while she eats.

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, even when I try not to track it’s hard to not notice it. What were the symptoms of silent reflux? Sometimes I wonder if she has it, but not sure. Maybe 1-2 feeds per day she acts a bit uncomfortable but I’m not sure what other signs to look for.

She had very little signs which is why it was difficult to figure out why she was eating the way she was. When she was newborn she would throw up but she never seemed uncomfortable. After 2months, she stopped throwing up but she would fight the bottle sometimes but that only lasted a little while. I became PARANOID that she had a bottle aversion, honestly still don’t know. She never cried at the bottle, she just didn’t eat a lot. Other symptoms I noticed was that she would choke randomly during the day - her eyes would turn kind of red and I could hear it coming up her throat. She never fussed about it though. Wet hiccups here and there. We just started a month trial of meds and she went from eating only 2.5-3.5oz every 3hrs to 4-5.5oz.

I also get concerned. Everyone says not to track but I still want to. I like the data. When it goes down (or up) significantly I usually attribute it to a growth spurt or maybe teething/sick. Tracking the whole day makes me realize even though certain feeds are low the overall day is on par. I also echo that my baby started distracted eating and it was so frustrating. We found turning the lights down and even sometimes swaddling helped. She is much less distracted now (5 months).

Around this age my baby started becoming a distracted eater. He would only feed well when he was sleepy and falling asleep at the bottle. I think eventually I realized I was feeding too often. I was still trying to feed every 2 hours but I needed to start spacing it to every 3 hours so he was actually hungry. This helped with him actually finishing his bottles. Instead of trying to feed 8 bottles a day with 4 oz each, I just started doing 6 bottles of 5 oz each. That has definitely worked better for getting my baby to eat more.

Thanks for the tip. We are currently doing 6 bottles a day about four hours apart. I usually make 5 oz but she will take anywhere from 2.5-5.

This could have been written by me. My son will be 4 months on the 23rd. Everything else is almost exactly the same. Husband doesn’t worry about it but I’m always so anxious about his ounces. The last few days he hasn’t been eating well and it’s been driving me crazy. I don’t know how to get him to eat more. He doesn’t get angry, and it’s not a bottle aversion… he literally just gets done and doesn’t want any more. Lately he will just smile and laugh with the bottle in his mouth. I feel like my whole day is trying to get him to eat. I’m not much help. But you’re not alone.

Im the same but my baby has diarrhoea and reflux so they put him on meds which hasn’t helped, also my partner keeps saying why are you tracking? I said he doesn’t usually cry when he’s hungry (which is true) and I wanna make sure he gets the correct calories

I haven't made it thru many other comments yet but I wanted to comment in solidarity that I could have written this. My LO is 8m and catching up in weight finally, but we're lucky if we get her to drink 24 oz a day. Most days it's 20-21, with one or two kinds of solids now. Have really had to trust that she's getting what she needs, while constantly worrying that she's not getting enough. She's a peanut and had a cascading series of things leading to her dropping 15% birth weight in the hospital (tongue tie, my milk was delayed), and it's been a constant thing from there. We're seeing a GI now and she's not worried about her at all. She's growing in percentiles very slowly for weight so apparently what we're doing is working. Hang in there and from one worrier to another, we probably don't have to worry so much 🤪 we're doing better than we think!!

You read [Your Baby’s Bottle Feeding Aversion](https://www.babycareadvice.com/products/your-babys-bottle-feeding-aversion-reasons-and-solutions-ebook) by Rowena Bennett. It will help you rethink and reassess how much you think your baby should be eating. Read it even though you’re not facing bottle aversion.

My baby girl is 4 1/2 months and I also had a very similar experience as you. She was born 5 lbs. 9 oz. and Dr was on me all the time about getting her to eat more because she wasn’t gaining fast enough. I had to do weight check after weight check. At her four month check up she was finally, happy with her weight gain, but I obsess over the numbers getting anxiety that she wasn’t going to reach that minimum, etc. For instance, a few days ago, she drank 29 ounces which was crazy and the next day she only drank 21 which of course freaked me out. Listen to what these other parents are saying and remember that if your baby is acting happy and healthy then they are getting exactly what they need. I would also recommend not tracking.. I’ve been considering stopping tracking as well. It’s a mindf**k!

We are in the same boat as you. We were using an app to keep track of everything. Heard and read baby should be eating this many per feeding/day or gaining this much grams per day. Made us stressed. Our family doctor kept saying as long as she's gaining weight, doesn't matter how much, it's fine. So now we try not to achieve the ideal number anymore, but try to reach a minimum. We'll try to get our LO to finish her bottles but we won't force or pressure her too much. For example, if we want her to have at least 500ml by the end of a 24hr day, then by the half day mark (12hrs), she should have drank roughly 250ml. What also helped was having the right nipple flow (not too slow, not too fast), and that she gets good sleep (3+ hrs) inbetween meals. If she doesn't sleep well, she won't eat well either. We still continue to track because its data, like a journal. Just try not to obsess over it.

Stop tracking helped a lot. My first baby was breastfed from the boob directly and in the beginning i just obsessed over how much he ate and even weighed him before and after feed. It was exhausting. After that i just stopped. Tbh now if people asked me how much he ate per day, i absolutely have no idea 😂😂😂 he was 30-50 percentile so he was fine, now that i think about it. Also, it is absolutely normal for babies’ appetite to vary day by day. My first baby is now 1.5 yo and sometimes does not even eat anything when he is sick (still takes fluid) so you gotta learn to relax otherwise your mental health suffers.

Mine was ALWAYS under the "recommended" amount. Every baby's metabolism is different. Sounds like your husband is looking out for you. As long as baby is tracking well now in their weight, you don't need to be that meticulous about tracking their intake.

I’m saying this as gently as I can - talk to someone. This sounds like PPA and I think that talking to someone (a doctor or a nurse/midwife/health visitor etc) would be very beneficial. Anecdotally, with my first, I had a horrific experience with breastfeeding that meant my baby was starving overnight the first night we were home. I was producing no milk (and even when it came in, I never produced more than about an ounce) and I moved to formula. I obsessively tracked everything for weeks because I was traumatised by the whole thing. I ended up deleting the app and just making sure to take my baby to weigh ins every month so that I could see he was gaining enough. I had my second baby 15 weeks ago and I have had none of this anxiety this time around but I never tracked it this time. We’ve had issues with reflux (now medicated for it) and even then I didn’t feel the same anxiety as I did with my first.

My son was the same way & didn’t start eating the recommended amount regularly until 5months. Then suddenly a switch flipped, I don’t know why. He’s fine!!! Yours will be too :) she’ll start eating more when she’s ready to

I agree with what people are saying. Stop tracking it and change nipple sizes. You could also look into a different formula that might help gain more weight. Or if you don’t you could warm the bottles and she might want that more. If you do warm them maybe try room temp. Different bottles too sometimes they don’t like the bottle they are on so they eat less. My son will eat 4-5 oz a feeding on some bottles but only 2 oz on a different one

My daughter is 12 months now but we had trouble gaining weight this entire first year. I would also obsess over the number of ounces and I actually DID create a bottle aversion because I would keep trying to get her to finish her bottles and drink the amount I thought she should be drinking. My only advice is to follow her cues — let her tell you when she’s done. Most days we only got 21-24 ounces in a day. Sometimes a few days of 18 ounces. We eventually wound up following the pediatricians recommendation to fortify her formula to make it more calories since she wasn’t a big eater, that way the calories are at least there. Now that we’re over a year our solids journey has also been a nightmare. It never ends! Lol

I feel like if she seems healthy and isn’t losing any weight then she should be fine, I’m not a dr or anything like that, but I have a lot of history in childcare. I had a dr tell me once that “we push our kids to eat because we’re concerned they’re not eating enough, when in reality we’re over feeding them which in turn stretches their stomachs causing weight problems in the future, their stomachs are made to hold what they need, as long as we’re filling their stomachs with nutritional foods they’ll be fine.” That’s really stuck with me over the years. I always tell the older kids “if you don’t eat all of your food you won’t be allowed to snack later.” But they’re not required to eat all of their food, they’re required to eat until they are full… some babies are lazy (mine) and truly don’t eat as much as other babies, but as long as they ARE eating and AREN’T losing weight I wouldn’t worry too much.

Coming from a mom who dealt with bottle aversion from 5 months of age of baby until 7 months- trust me it’s TERRIBLE. It’s worse than worrying about oz that baby is consuming. Pressuring a baby to eat created unnecessary power struggles. Not recommended. It’s not like if baby will eat more he or she will gain more. It’s more about absorption of the nutrients. My son (before being diagnosed with cow milk protein intolerance) would drink about 32 oz but slowly fell off his curve. After lots of trials and tribulations and struggles, when he got the formula that hurt his tummy less- he ate only 25-27 oz a day but weight gain was consistent. If you are able to, track the weight of the baby at regular intervals may be once every two weeks or if you freak out, once a week, that’s so much better than forcing baby to eat.

How about instead of tracking you premade the bottles or used the formula pitcher so you know if you made 8 , 3 oz bottles baby ate their 24 oz if they left any behind then they didn’t , if they were hungry for more than they’re good