Day 12, exclusively breastfeeding, and I have NO idea how much milk he's actually getting. How does anyone know??

First baby, day 12, and the thing that's breaking my brain is that I cannot see the milk. My friend bottle feeds and can say "he took 90ml at 4pm" like it's nothing. I have literally no numbers at all. He feeds, he comes off, sometimes he seems done and sometimes he yells, and I'm just meant to trust the system?

Context for why I'm spiralling: at the day 10 weigh-in he was still 90g under his birth weight. The midwife seemed relaxed, said "nearly there, we'll check again in a few days", but 90g UNDER is all I heard and my partner has started saying maybe we top up with formula "so at least we'd know what he's getting", which sounds horribly logical at 11pm.

I've been googling baby scales to weigh him before and after feeds. Nappies seem plentiful but I keep second guessing what actually counts as a wet one?? Is there any way to actually KNOW, or does everyone just white-knuckle this bit?

Oh I remember this stage so well. With my first I actually rented one of those scales and I am here to tell you it made me INSANE. Weighed her before and after every feed for three weeks. One feed she'd take loads, next feed barely anything (which is completely normal, some feeds are meals and some are snacks), and every small number sent me into a panic that the scale itself had caused. Sent it back in the end and honestly felt lighter than the baby.

Second baby: I counted nappies and went to the weekly weigh-ins, that's it. The trick someone taught me for "what counts as wet": pour three tablespoons of water into a dry nappy and have a feel. THAT's a proper wet one. You'll never wonder again.

Gently flagging the "top up so we'd know" plan because I ran that exact experiment with my daughter. Started one bottle a day at three weeks purely for the reassurance of a number. Thing is, every bottle was a feed my body never got the order for, and supply is order-based. By week six I was topping up because I genuinely needed to, and it took me weeks of extra feeds and pumping to climb back out. Not saying it goes that way for everyone, but "just to know" is how it starts.

A number-free thing that helped me instead: listen for swallows. There's a soft little "kah" sound once they're actually drinking. First time I heard it on purpose I cried, obviously, day 12 hormones.

Lauren, the answer to "how does anyone know" is that we measure what comes out and how he grows, because those are the two things that can actually be counted. From about day 5 you're looking for roughly 6 or more heavy wet nappies in 24 hours (Gemma's three-tablespoon test is exactly the right calibration) plus several soft yellow stools a day. On the scales, newborns normally lose up to about 7 to 10% of their birth weight in the first days and are usually back at birth weight around day 10 to 14, so "90g under at day 10, relaxed midwife, recheck in a few days" is the standard picture of a baby getting there on schedule, not a red flag. What tells you nothing, despite how loudly it feels like information: how soft your breasts are, how long feeds last, whether he sometimes yells afterwards. The site's guide to how to tell your baby is getting enough milk walks through all the reliable signs, day by day.

On the scale plan: weighed feeds do exist as a tool, but they belong inside a proper feeding assessment with a lactation professional using clinical scales, where one weigh is read in context. Home before-and-after weighing tends to do to most parents exactly what it did to Gemma. And Jess has described the top-up mechanics accurately: supply is built on demand, so routine bottles "for information" quietly reduce the order book. If topping up is ever genuinely needed, that call is best made with your midwife or doctor looking at the whole picture.

The things that DO warrant a prompt call rather than forum reassurance: fewer than about 6 wet nappies a day after day 5, no yellow stools, a baby too sleepy to wake for feeds, or weight still falling. None of which sounds like your boy. Come back and tell us what the recheck says.

I posted an almost identical 3am panic here in March (my mum had convinced me my milk had "gone"). He's four months now and built like a small prop forward. What saved my sanity was a nappy tally stuck on the fridge, one biro mark per nappy, so at panic o'clock I could look at actual marks instead of my own memory. Highly recommend.

Recheck was this morning: 140g ABOVE birth weight. I cried on the poor woman doing the weighing, apparently this is common.

Fridge tally is up (14 marks yesterday), the three-tablespoon test has been demonstrated to my partner like a science fair project, and the formula conversation has been shelved. Scale rental tab: closed. Thank you all so much, I've reread this thread about nine times.