It's three in the morning. Your baby has just fed, come off, and ten minutes later he's rooting for your breast again. You squeeze it and barely anything comes out. Earlier in the day you pumped after a feed and got maybe twenty millilitres. Your breasts feel soft, almost empty. And slowly that one thought creeps up on you that nearly every mother lies awake with at some point: am I actually making enough, is my baby getting what he needs?
That worry is real and heavy and you're far from the only one carrying it. The rotten part is that you're basing it on three signals that tell you almost nothing: how often your baby wants to feed, how soft your breast feels, and how much you can pump. At the breast you never see how much goes in, and at three in the morning your mind fills that gap with the worst possible explanation. But there are signals that do tell you the truth. They just aren't in your breast or your pump. They're in the nappy.
This piece takes the evidence away from how your body feels and puts it where you can actually count it: wet nappies, the poo, the weight, and how your baby behaves once the feed is done. You'll get how many wet nappies a day is normal, where the line sits on weight, and a firm list of the signs that are a reason to get help today. So you have a measuring stick you can trust instead of your own frightened gut at three in the morning.
Short answer. You don't read whether your baby is getting enough off your breast or your pump, you read it off the nappy, the weight and how your baby behaves after a feed. From around day 5 to 6 you're looking for at least six good wet nappies and a few yellow poos a day, plus a baby who comes off content after a feed, softens and goes drowsy. On weight: a drop of about 7 to 10 per cent in the first days is normal, and most babies are back to their birth weight by around day 10 to 14. A soft breast, a poor pumping result and a baby who wants to feed all the time tell you nothing about a shortage of milk. Do ring for help the same day if you're seeing fewer wet nappies than expected, a baby too sleepy to wake or feed, a dry mouth, a sunken soft spot on the head, or skin that's turning yellow.
You're measuring the wrong things
This is the heart of nearly every sleepless doubt. The problem usually isn't that you don't understand how breastfeeding works. It's that you're judging your supply by the exact three things that say the least about it. Recognise them?
- How soft your breast feels. A soft breast feels like an empty breast, so you decide there's nothing in it. But how your breast feels tells you very little about what's inside. In the first days your breast is meant to be soft, and later on too, once your supply has settled to match your baby, your breasts often go soft and comfortable again. Soft doesn't mean empty.
- How much you can pump. You pump after a feed and get no more than twenty millilitres, so you think, there you go, not enough. But a pump is far less efficient than your baby. Your baby draws far more out of your breast with a good latch than any pump ever will, and plenty of women respond badly to a pump while feeding perfectly well. What the pump gets tells you almost nothing about what your baby takes.
- How often and how fretfully your baby wants to feed. A baby who's on the breast every five minutes, rooting and crying, feels like a baby who's starving. But wanting to feed constantly comes with a tiny tummy and with the growth spurts where your baby drives your supply up for a day or two. It's usually the mechanism, not an alarm.
All three feel like hard proof and none of them is. They have one thing in common: they revolve around the one thing you can't see, the amount your baby actually drinks. That's why they fill up so easily with fear. The fix is simple but takes a bit of retraining: turn your attention away from your breast and your pump, towards the nappy and the scales.
Look at the nappy: what goes in comes back out
The nappy is your best gauge, and the lovely thing is you've got one in front of you every single time. The logic is simple: if your baby is getting enough in, he wees and poos enough too. This is the rule of thumb the NHS and your health visitor use for the first week.
- Wet nappies climb with the days. Day 1 about 1 wet nappy, day 2 about 2, day 3 about 3, and from day 5 to 6 at least about 6 good wet nappies a day. A good wet nappy feels heavy, roughly like tipping a couple of tablespoons of water into it. Not sure? Pour thirty millilitres of water into a dry disposable nappy once, so you know how heavy wet actually feels.
- The poo changes colour. The first days it's black and sticky, that's meconium. Around day 3 it turns greenish, and from day 4 to 5 yellow and soft, often with little seedy bits. That switch to yellow is a strong sign the mature milk is coming through. In the first weeks you're looking for at least about 3 yellow poos a day.
- The wee is pale and doesn't smell. Clear to light-yellow wee is what you want. Dark, concentrated wee, or orange to pink powdery marks in the nappy after day 3, is not, and those come back later under the red flags.
If the wet nappies and the yellow poos are on track, there's almost certainly nothing wrong, however empty your breast feels. If you're still in those first days when it's only colostrum and your breast is still soft, read up on what's normal then in the first days as your milk comes in.
And when the poo almost stops after a few weeks?
Around six weeks the poo frequency can suddenly drop right off. Where your baby used to poo after every feed, he might now skip a day or even a few. That sends a lot of mothers straight back into a spin, when in a breastfed baby it's usually the opposite of a problem: your mature milk leaves so little waste behind that there's simply less to poo out. As long as the poo stays soft, your baby wees enough, is content and is putting on weight, pooing less often after the first weeks is no sign of a shortage. The wet nappies stay your daily benchmark.
Look at the weight: how much loss is normal?
After the nappy, weight is your most reliable measure, because it adds up what's gone in over a longer stretch. There's just one catch: nearly every baby loses weight in the first days, and that's normal. Your baby is born with a bit of extra fluid and sheds it over the first days.
- A drop of about 7 to 10 per cent of the birth weight in the first days is normal. Around day 3 to 4 your baby hits the lowest point. If the loss is heading towards or past 10 per cent, your midwife takes a closer look and it's common to start topping up. That's exactly the line they act on.
- By around day 10 to 14 most babies are back to their birth weight. From there the weight should climb steadily along the centile chart your health visitor plots in the red book.
- One weighing tells you little, the line tells you everything. Don't look at a single figure, look at the trend across the weeks. That's what the chart is for. If you want to see how your baby is tracking on the chart, you can with your baby's growth chart.
A word about scales at home. It's tempting to weigh your baby just before and just after every feed to see how much went in. Don't: those readings swing wildly, rarely add up, and only wind you up. Leave the weighing to your midwife or your health visitor, who watch the line over time. You keep track of the nappies.
Look at your baby after the feed
Alongside the nappy and the weight, you get a third benchmark free at every feed: how your baby behaves the moment he's finished. A baby who's had enough shows you.
- Coming off content. Your baby lets go on his own, goes floppy and drowsy, and has that unmistakable satisfied, almost drunk look. That's the clearest sign of a good feed.
- Hands falling open. A hungry baby often has clenched little fists. As the feed fills him up, those hands relax and fall open. Clenched fists after a full feed can mean your baby isn't done yet.
- Audible swallowing during the feed. After the first quick sucks you hear a slow, steady swallow rhythm. That swallowing is the sound of milk actually going through. If you mostly hear fast fluttering with no swallow, check whether the latch can go deeper.
Watch the combination, not one lone sign. A baby who's fretful now and then but wees, poos, gains and mostly comes off content is getting what he needs. If the latch itself still isn't quite right and you hear little swallowing, see whether the mouthful can go deeper in what a good deep latch looks and feels like. A deep latch moves more milk and makes it easier on both of you.
Why wanting to feed constantly is actually normal
This deserves its own heading, because it's the false measure that causes the most panic. Your baby feeds, drops off to sleep, wakes fifteen minutes later and wants more. In the evening he's sometimes on the breast for hours on end. It feels like proof that you're not making enough. But it's usually the opposite.
A newborn's stomach is about the size of a marble in the first days, so it empties again almost as fast as it fills. Small amount, frequent feeds: those two go together. And that hours-long feeding at the end of the day, called cluster feeding, is the very mechanism that keeps your supply up. The more your baby drinks, the more you make. Later on there are days that come back around where your baby suddenly wants far more, often around three weeks, six weeks and three months. Those are usually growth spurts of a few days, not a sign your milk is running out. Frequent feeding is the work for a bit, not an alarm bell. There's more on that in what to do about low milk supply or a slow let-down.
When you do get help the same day
And now the honest part, because reassurance with no limits would let you down. A genuine shortage isn't common, but it does happen, and then every day counts. Get in touch the same day with your midwife, health visitor, GP or a lactation consultant if you see one or more of these signs:
- Too few wet nappies. Fewer than about 6 good wet nappies a day from day 5 to 6. Nappies that stay dark and barely wet after day 3 belong here too, as do orange to pink powdery crystals in the nappy. That points to too little fluid going in.
- A baby too sleepy to feed. A newborn you can barely rouse, who feels floppy, won't or can't feed, or feeds fewer than about 8 times in 24 hours. A newborn who sleeps too much to ask needs to be actively woken to feed.
- No weight gain or ongoing loss. A drop heading towards or past 10 per cent, weight that keeps falling after day 5, or a baby who still isn't back to birth weight around day 10 to 14.
- Signs of dehydration. A dry mouth, few or no tears, a sunken soft spot on the top of the head (the fontanelle), or a baby who's strikingly floppy and not very alert. Ring straight away.
- Skin or the whites of the eyes turning yellow (jaundice) along with sleepiness. Mild jaundice is common, but jaundice together with a sleepy baby who's feeding poorly should be assessed the same day.
A single lone sign doesn't automatically mean disaster, but don't wait until it feels bad enough. Practically, where do you go. In the UK your midwife looks after you and your baby in the first days and weeks, and your health visitor takes over after that, with weighing done at the baby clinic and plotted in the red book. Your GP is there for anything that worries you. A lactation consultant (IBCLC), who you can find through the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain (LCGB) directory, is worth her weight in gold for going through the feeding with you, and the National Breastfeeding Helpline (0300 100 0212) is there for the day-to-day questions. If your baby is very unwell, floppy or hard to rouse, ring your GP or NHS 111 straight away, and 999 if he's seriously unresponsive. If you yourself run a fever with a red, warm, painful patch in your breast and a fluey feeling, that fits with mastitis, so ring your GP. Not sure it's worth a phone call? It is. In these weeks there's no such thing as a question too small.
Soft, dry support for the phase that follows
A nursing bra doesn't measure whether your baby is getting enough, it does nothing to your supply. What a bra does do only comes once your milk is up and running: that's when you start leaking between feeds and mostly want to stay dry. That's what we made our nursing bra for. It's wire-free and knitted from a soft, giving fabric that holds your breast in place without pressing hard anywhere, with a clip that opens one-handed so you can latch on quickly even in the middle of the night. It's made from an OEKO-TEX Class I certified fabric (certificate number 11-36224), the strictest category for textiles that touch a baby's skin. The absorbent layer holds up to 30 ml per cup so your top stays dry when you leak between feeds. If you'd rather have everything on latch and feeding in one place first, go to the overview of latch and feeding. And you can see the bra itself here: see the nursing bra.
Frequently asked questions about whether your baby is getting enough
How do I know my baby is getting enough without weighing?
By the nappy and the behaviour. From day 5 to 6 you're looking for at least about 6 good wet nappies and a few yellow poos a day, plus a baby who comes off content after a feed, softens and goes drowsy. If those signs are there, your baby is getting what he needs. Leave the weighing across the weeks to your health visitor at the baby clinic.
My breasts feel soft and empty, does that mean not enough milk?
No. How your breast feels tells you very little about what's inside. In the first days your breast is meant to be soft, and later on too, once your supply has settled to match your baby, your breasts often go soft again without you making any less. Don't judge by how your breast feels, look at the nappies, the weight and whether your baby is content after a feed.
I can barely pump anything, do I have low milk supply?
Almost certainly not. A pump is far less efficient than your baby, and plenty of women respond badly to a pump while feeding perfectly well. Your baby draws far more out of your breast with a good latch than a pump ever will. What you pump therefore says nothing about what your baby takes. Look at the nappies and the weight, not the pump bottle.
My baby wants to feed all the time, is he getting enough?
Usually yes. Wanting to feed constantly comes with a tiny tummy and with the growth spurts around three weeks, six weeks and three months, where your baby drives your supply up for a bit. The hours-long feeding at the end of the day actually keeps your milk up. Check whether your baby comes off content after a feed and whether the nappies are on track. If those are good, your baby is getting what he needs.
When should I really worry that my baby isn't getting enough?
Ring your midwife, health visitor, GP or a lactation consultant the same day if you see fewer than about 6 wet nappies a day from day 5 to 6, a baby too sleepy to wake or feed, no weight gain, a dry mouth, a sunken fontanelle, or skin turning yellow together with sleepiness. Not sure? Then ringing is always the right call.
Read on in this guide
- The first days as your milk comes in
- What a good deep latch looks and feels like
- Low milk supply or a slow let-down: what helps?
- Pain-free feeding: what to check first when your nipples hurt?
- Everything on latch and feeding (the overview)
