How to know if a baby is drinking enough breast milk
Family • Maternity
This is a sequence of four babies, running down the scale from really good drinker to not quite drinking. How Much Milk Baby Is Getting is a fraught question for many mothers. Especially when well meaning family members, used to pouring vast amounts of formula down their own baby's throats say... "but how much milk is she getting?" Many a new mother has panicked at that question, and reached for the bottle. If you are stressed and wondering, take a moment to run through the 4 babies here, and examine their breastfeeding technique.
Do note that this is not a latch issue! All these babies are latched well - but their skill levels on breastfeeding are different.
Baby 1 is an excellent breastfeeder. Look at the jaw and cheek muscles go! Huge amounts of milk are being extracted from this mother's breasts. Excellent muscle tone is being built by those jaw muscles, and the mouth is being filled with milk fast and furious. This baby will not need to feed for more than a few minutes, before falling off in a Milk Induced Coma! There is an excellent match here between the baby's internal mouth shape, and the mother's breast, and a lot of milk is being extracted quickly.