How Much Milk Should a Newborn Eat? A Day-by-Day Guide

Few questions cause more 2 a.m. anxiety than "is my baby eating enough?" The good news: newborn appetites follow a fairly predictable curve, and your baby's cues are the most reliable guide of all.

Quick answer: amounts by age

Age	Per feed	Feeds / 24h	Daily total
Day 1	5–7 ml (a teaspoon)	8–12	~30–60 ml
Days 2–3	14–22 ml	8–12	~180 ml
Week 1	30–60 ml (1–2 oz)	8–12	~300–450 ml
Weeks 2–4	60–90 ml (2–3 oz)	8–10	~450–700 ml
1–2 months	90–120 ml (3–4 oz)	7–9	~600–900 ml
2–4 months	120–150 ml (4–5 oz)	6–8	~750–1000 ml
4–6 months	150–210 ml (5–7 oz)	5–7	~900–1200 ml

A common rule of thumb for formula-fed babies: 150–200 ml per kg of body weight per day (about 2.5 oz per pound), up to a max of roughly 1 litre / 32 oz a day.

Cues beat charts

Watch your baby, not the bottle. Early hunger cues include:

• Stirring, turning the head, mouth opening (rooting)
• Bringing hands to the mouth, sucking on fists
• Lip-smacking or soft fussing

Crying is a late hunger cue — try to feed before your baby gets there. Signs of a full baby: relaxing the hands, turning away, slowing down, or falling asleep content.

Breastfeeding: you can't see the ounces

If you're nursing, you'll never measure intake directly — so track output instead:

• Wet diapers: roughly one per day of life for the first week, then 6+ heavy wet diapers a day.
• Stools: several a day in the early weeks; mustard-yellow and seedy once your milk is in.
• Weight: babies can lose up to ~7–10% in the first days, then should be back to birth weight by about 2 weeks.

When to call your pediatrician

• Fewer than 6 wet diapers a day after the first week
• No weight gain or continued weight loss after 2 weeks
• Consistently sleeping through feeds and hard to wake
• Signs of dehydration: sunken soft spot, no tears, very dark urine

Where tracking helps

Logging each feed — time, side or amount, and diapers — turns "I think she's eating enough" into a clear picture you can show your pediatrician. In Baby Signal, LogLab captures bottle amounts, nursing sessions, and diapers in a couple of taps, then surfaces the daily totals and patterns automatically, so you spend less time doing math at 2 a.m. and more time reading your actual baby.