You're a first-time mom and trying to feed your newborn, but she keeps falling asleep. You're worried because you think she's barely taking in any formula. What's a new parent to do in this situation?

"This is a very common scenario and one that first-time mothers understandably get very anxious about," says Mary Stanford, a pediatric speech language pathologist specializing in feeding and swallowing disorders in infancy at Morristown Memorial Hospital in Morristown, N.J. "But with patience, nurturing and careful monitoring, they'll be able to make sure that their newborn is well fed."

As a new mom, Debbie Straka-DeMarco found her infant was typically falling asleep while taking a bottle. This usually meant the baby was tired or was too comfortable during the feeding. "I usually would try and change the baby's position to burp them, to see if I could wake them up a little more," she says. "When the infant was really little, I would have to change their diaper to wake them up a little so they would finish more of their bottle."

The most important thing for new parents to know is that newborns – infants under 1 month old – typically take in about 20 ounces of formula a day, with a range of 16 to 24 ounces, says Dawn Lee Garzon, assistant professor at the College of Nursing at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, Mo. "This works out to about 10 2-ounce feedings about every two to three hours or so. So it might seem like the baby isn't taking in a lot of formula or breast milk, but they have small stomachs and can only hold so much in one feeding."

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