5 month old snack feeding - poor weight gain - PDA

[LisaMarie121]

Good day all,

So I'm battling with my 5 month old. She snack feeds during the day and has 30min cat naps here and there. Her intake is quite low, sitting on around 580 to 650ml for a 24 hr cycle. She has like 40ml every 45min to a hour and sometimes a 80ml every 1.5hr

To make matters worse, the pediatrician has diagnosed a PDA so we are on medication 3x a day to help her heart until we see the cardiologist again.

Her weight gain is not the best since she turned 3 months. From last week till yesterday she has only gained 50 grams.

First time mommy and I have no clue on what to do to improve her feeding, sleeping and growth. And stressing lots due to the PDA. I have started giving her rice cereal as add to her daily milk intake but I've been reading that I shouldn't if her weight gain is poor. So I will stop that for now and wait a bit longer.

What can I do to improve this ? Any others with experience on the PDA? Apparently hers is quite big. From 1 till 10 she's on a 6. Not quite sure what that measures to.

Also by going or trying to stretch to a 3/4 hour feeding cycle, I am scared that she won't drink as much ?

As if being a first time mommy isn't enough stress....Lord I feel like crying.

[Lolly]

Hugs to you and welcome to the boards

First off, I have no idea what PDA is or what that means for her growth, but could some of the slow growth be due to that? Have you been given any guidance for how she needs to be handled or food intake?

The way to get her to take bigger feeds is to not feed her before a certain point of time and keep tooth to let her adjust then lengthen it again. So, if she feeds at 7am and has been feeding 45 mins later you don't feed her before an hour and make sure that's the same for every feed. I would hold at that for a couple days and then lengthen to 1.5 hours for example. You may need to change to a faster teat so that she can drink quickly without getting tired sucking on the bottle. There will be some crying as you will need to distract her, so I guess my concern is that would the crying be too much for her medically?

Stretching to a longer routine means she has less bottles, but she should be taking more in a bottle so the overall milk volume is the same. I would expect a 5 month old to be on 4 day time bottles, maybe a dreamfeed and then 1 or two night feeds, so 5 -6 bottles in 24 hours. The volume is very baby dependant, but 7oz/ 210ml per feed is probably average, so over 1000ml in 24 hours.

I would stay off the rice to be honest as it's empty calories which fill the space in her tummy you need for the more calorie dense formula. If she's showing signs of food readiness you could look into Baby Led Weaning which may be a better option for her.

What do you think?

Laura