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@jetsa: How does she have extra milk? If you don't think he needs it then can't you just send 3 4oz bottles.

@jetsa: LO is 9 weeks old and I send 4 - 5oz bottles. He's at daycare from 8-5 and eats at 9, 12, and 3. Most of the time he eats 3.5-4.5 ounces.

It seems like day care employees should know how to feed breast fed infants but they don't or they play ignorant because it's easier to quiet the baby with more milk. My daycare had LO drinking up to 19oz a day.

With encouragement from HBers I took charge. I wrote up LO's feeding plan. 3x 4.5oz bottles. Nurse before drop off, bottles at 9:30, 12:30, 3:30. No bottle after 4pm because I was ready to feed at pick up. LO went from 19oz to 13.5oz without any problem. Another mom at the same daycare went through the same thing less than a month later and they treated her like nobody had ever raised this issue before.

@jetsa: my daycare would never increase the amount they are feeding without confirming with us first. We did the same breast milk first but formula as a back up. We have agreed amount per bottle and how often she was fed. Any time that changed we let them know. Or when they felt she needed more they called and confirm first.

My LO never drank that much at that age. If you don't think your LO needs that much I would insist daycare lady scales back.

Kellymom recommends 1-1.25 oz per hour away from mom with no more than 4 oz per bottle. I send 12 oz as 4 x 3 oz bottles for my daughter who loves to eat frequently and that has worked for us so far - from 4 months old /15 pounds to 5.5 months/16-17 pounds now. .Maybe show them the Kellymom article on bottle feeding the breastfed baby and the appropriate amounts?

I could only ever pump 12 oz per day so my kids only got three 4 oz bottles while I worked - this was from ~14 weeks to 1 year old.

Does your LO use a pacifier? If so after he eats the 4 oz bottle have her give him the paci - maybe he just wants to suck, not necessarily eat

@jetsa: Also I would pre fill the bottles - that way she sees that he has 3 bottles for the day and will make it last!

I would be furious if she purposely ignored instructions that I had left for feeding my child (aka, giving him extra formula without asking you after finishing the milk you sent). Personally, if she continued to do that, I would make it known how unhappy I was with her behavior and threaten to switch daycares. To me, that's completely unacceptable--you're the mom, what you say goes.

@jetsa: Woohoo, I got a shout-out!

So I did a bottle bootcamp before Xander started daycare at 12 weeks and found that he drank anywhere from 3 oz to 4.5 oz in a bottle every 3 hours. So I sent 5 oz bottles for him right from the get-go, even though I was sure he didn't really need that much. After the first couple weeks, he always finished the bottles (they don't do paced feedings) and insisted insisted INSISTED that he was still hungry and needed more. I was CONVINCED he didn't and just kept telling them that NO, he was not still hungry and they needed to find other ways to pacify him instead of just giving him more food. Finally around 5-6 months, I set up an appointment with an LC to do a weighted feed because I KNEW he didn't need more food, but wanted some proof of it. At home, we exclusively nursed and I really didn't think he was getting 5+ oz out of my boobs and he could often go MORE than 3 hours between nursing. At our weighted feed, he only drank 4 oz and ended up not being hungry for 4 hours. So I felt validated and just continued to tell daycare that no, he was not still hungry, he did not need more than 5 oz, I was not sending anymore milk.

When he finally started having lunch at daycare (8 months) was when they FINALLY got off my back about how much I was sending in the bottles because they had another food-related thing they could do with him, which I guess kept him happy. The whole time was so frustrating and I'm just glad we're finally pass that hurdle. NONE of the daycare people seemed to understand the difference between BM and formula, so all the other babies were drinking 6-8 oz of formula and I was only sending 5 oz of BM and they just didn't understand how that could possibly be enough! It was very frustrating.

LO is EBF, and I've had lots of back and forth with day care about milk, so I feel your pain. A few thoughts in no particular order.

Like @Adira: it's only really eased since we started sending solids, like last week. Also like you, I struggle to stay on top of her needs - I often pump 5x a day!

I would not want my daycare portioning bottles - I always sent pre-portioned amounts.

You might try having them feed four smaller bottles - I know this works for some. We send four for my LO, even though she's 6.5 months and she doesn't need to eat that frequently.

What I ended up doing was upping amounts slowly, and when I was confident she was getting enough, I would just send 2 oz of frozen for days they really needed it. It would usually end up they used it once a week, so that did save me from having to send extra every day.

Every baby is different, but it sounds like you are sending enough milk. My baby had topped out at about 13-14 ounces for a 9 hour separation, occasionally taking the extra two ounces.

Good luck! What I reminded myself was that it will get easier once solids are introduced, and it has. So keep in mind you hopefully have about three months of this challenge as opposed to nine months. It will get easier.

@jetsa: Do you nurse in the middle of the night? If so, then you know he's probably definitely getting enough to eat and he probably doesn't need the additional formula during the day! It takes a while for a baby to recognize he's full too, so if she's feeding him too quickly, then of course he's going to keep acting hungry once he's finished a bottle!

I actually just had my daycare ask me if they could feed him solids immediately following a bottle and said that he was still hungry after he finished the bottle *eye roll* and I said "Uh, sure, I guess so" even though when they DID offer him the solids an hour after the bottle, he only ate half of it, so he CLEARLY wasn't still hungry! These people are nuts.

@jetsa: Oh yeah, if he's nursing all night, then he definitely (in my opinion) doesn't need to be supplemented with formula during the day! He can always make up anything he's missing (IF he actually needs more) at night. I would tell your provider to stop supplementing and try paced feeding and that when he's done a bottle, immediately do something else with him so he's engaged in another activity.