Understanding your baby’s appetite can help you be better at feeding her!
When Karen’s baby girl was a newborn, she breast-fed her but didn’t know how much she was drinking. She also couldn’t tell when she was hungry or full. Karen kept watching and eventually figured out her baby’s signals. Karen, like many moms, had questions about her baby’s appetite and feeding during the first six months.
Your baby’s appetite is what drives her eating and stops it when she is full. This appetite balance depends on many things, which act together to help your baby eat and grow:
While young babies aren’t super-active, before you know it they will be crawling and then walking. This increase in activity can trigger a bigger appetite.
Hormones act on their own, based on a sense of fullness and hunger felt in the stomach. When your baby is hungry, certain hormones are released from the stomach and tell the brain it’s time to eat. After your baby eats, different hormones travel through the body which signal fullness. This tummy-hormone-brain system is there when your baby is born, making sure eating helps growth and development. Many other factors may affect your baby’s appetite.
Often, babies are up during the night because they are hungry. That hormone system works around the clock, triggering hunger and making baby cry for a feeding. After all, that feeding before bedtime has made its way through the tummy, and the tummy is ready to be filled again. As your baby grows, he will be able to sleep longer without eating, but young babies need to be fed often.
Growth and appetite are closely linked. When your baby is growing, her appetite kicks in to make sure she eats enough food. Likewise, later on when your child becomes a toddler, growth slows down and you may see decreases in her appetite, which is often part of the reason for picky eating during toddlerhood.
Babies are born with a natural preference for sweet and fat flavors, and eventually they learn to like salt. Research tells us that the more sugar, fat and salt exposure baby gets early on, the greater liking they have for these foods later. Stay away from too many sweets and fatty foods during the first two years when your baby is doing the important job of learning
about flavors.
Babies have tiny tummies, and they don’t hold a lot of food at once. That means your baby will be hungry throughout the day. As baby grows bigger so does her tummy, allowing more liquid or food to be eaten. This helps to keep her fuller for a longer time. By the time your baby is 6 months old, she will likely be able to drink a 6 to 8 ounce feeding.
Parents can influence baby’s appetite in negative ways by pushing baby to eat more than they are hungry for, or not letting a baby finish eating, which may teach baby to overeat or undereat. Examples of this are making your baby finish the bottle or baby food jar, or stopping a feeding too early. These interactions may teach your baby to eat beyond her natural appetite or leave her hungry and wanting more.
Understanding your baby’s appetite can help you be better at feeding her!
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