How Much Milk Does a Breastfed Baby Need?

That question is one almost every breastfeeding mother asks at some point.  Their baby could be a newborn, and they are worried they aren’t getting enough milk, or the baby could be older-over six months and eating some solids, but still needs breastmilk.  How much is enough?

 I had this really neat page bookmarked and came across it again today.  It is from Kellymom.com, the wonderful evidence based breastfeeding website.  It is a milk calculator, which will give you a nice guideline on how much milk your baby needs.  You simply put in the number of feedings per day, and hit calculate. It gives you about how much milk your baby needs in ounces on the high end and the low end of the scale.  If you scroll down after the calculator, there are some paragraphs of information on how much milk an older baby needs as well.

The article points out that most doctors base the amount needed on formula intake, “which research has shown after the early weeks, these methods overestimate the amount of milk baby actually needs.”  (quote from the article).

I realized I had this bookmarked for my use, and thought it was too neat of a tool not to share.