One of the challenges of bottle feeding is that the parent can monitor their baby’s intake. This leads to many parents believing that they should guide or control how much milk their baby takes.

Babies are born with an in-built appetite mechanism, which enables them to cue for food when hungry and to stop eating when full. However, this mechanism has evolved to work hand in hand with breastfeeding, which is more in the baby’s control. If we use baby-led bottle-feeding techniques (see article 26) then we can work with our babies to ensure they are taking in the correct volumes of milk for adequate growth.

With bottle fed babies, there is a greater risk of over-feeding than under-feeding, and so we want to be alert to signs from our babies that they are full and would like to end the feed.

It can be useful, however, to have guidelines of the volumes that an “average” bottle fed baby may eat at various ages. The information below gives these volumes, but bear in mind that these averages can vary by around 20% either way.

First week of life

Age	Number of feeds per day	Volume required per feed
Day 1	8-12	10-15ml*
Day 2	8-12	20ml
Day 3	8-12	30ml
Day 4	8-12	40ml
Day 5	8-12	50ml
Day 6	8-12	60ml
Day 7	8-12	60ml

* a newborn’s stomach doesn’t have much ‘stretch’ in the first 24 hours, and so they can feel very uncomfortable with large volumes on this day.

Weeks 2 – 8

At this age, the volume of milk that your baby needs depends on their size.

As a general rule, we advise giving babies 150ml of milk for every kg of their body weight for every 24 hours. This gives you the following equation for feed volume:

150ml x body weight kgnumber of feeds per day=feed volume ml

So, for example, if you have a 4kg baby they will need 600ml of milk every day. If they are having 8 feeds per day, then this will give you an average feed volume of 75ml (600ml / 4kg).

2 – 6 Months

Once your baby is two months old, they will have reached ‘maximum milk needs’. From this point onwards they will drink a relatively stable amount of milk per day until milk begins to be displaced by solid foods. This volume is typically in the range of 750ml – 1000ml per 24 hours (again, allowing for 20% variance either way).

Some families prefer for their babies to take this milk in larger bottles, less frequently. However, studies have shown that responsive bottle feeding (allowing the baby to direct the volume and frequency of feeds) is protective against obesity in later life. If we assume breastfeeding patterns to be the biological norm, we can anticipate that responsively-fed babies would typically feed 6-8 times in 24 hours through to 6 months.

6-12 Months (and beyond)

At this point, you will have introduced solids into your baby’s diet. Milk continues to play an important role in your baby’s diet and you may not see much reduction in volume until they are well established on solids (each baby will be unique in when this occurs). In general, milk volumes tend to drop significantly from 9 months, and by one year old there is no need to continue to give infant formula.

If your older baby or toddler still enjoys a milk feed, you can give them whole cow’s milk at this point.

How much should I bottle feed my baby?

Unii Expert Wendy Lever explains how much you should feed your baby.