Milky Monday: Do I Have Enough Milk?

One of the most asked questions I get from clients is, “How do I know they’re getting enough?/ How do I know I have enough milk?”

If you’re feeding at the chest, watch your baby for hunger and fullness cues, as well as diaper output and weight gain to know they’re transferring enough milk. (Side note: If your baby was born early, they may not be able to give appropriate hunger cues, and should be fed every 2-2.5 hours until they can tell you when they’re hungry.)

Hunger Cues

A full-term, healthy baby will tell you they’re hungry by:

  • Lip-smacking and licking

  • Bring their hands to mouth

  • Turning their head side to side

These early hunger cues are the best time to feed baby. If they start to cry from hunger, you may need to calm baby before they can latch on.

Fullness Cues

You can tell your baby is full if they:

  • Are fully relaxed after feeding, with open hands and arms

  • Unlatch on their own and seem content

  • Fall asleep after eating, as long as you’ve heard many audible swallows during the feed (falling asleep soon after latching is not a fullness cue)

Weight Gain

Monitor your baby’s growth with the help of your doctor to assure they’re growing along their growth curve. It’s normal for babies to lose weight in the first few days after birth, and they should be back to their birth weight by 2 weeks old.

Generally, breastfed babies should double their birth weight by 6 months old, and triple their birth weight by their first birthday.

Diapers

Baby’s output will tell you a lot about how much milk they’re getting. In the immediate postpartum, diapers should correspond to how many days old baby is, for example: one wet, one poopy for day 1; two wet and two poopy for day 2; up to day 5, by which time baby should be having 6-8 wet diapers a day and 4-5 poopy diapers a day.

Many wet diapers in the first 24 hours of life is not indicative of milk transfer, particularly if you’ve had a hospital birth with IV fluids. Also remember that IV fluids during labor can artificially inflate baby’s birth weight, and many wet diapers in the first 24 hours — a result of the excess fluid — can make newborn weight loss seem much more dramatic than it is.

Baby’s first poops are thick, sticky meconium which is usually black or very dark green and tar-like. With sufficient milk transfer, baby’s poop should be green by day 3, and yellow and seedy by day 5.

This came out way longer than I’d planned, so next week we’ll cover pumping!