I keep reading different things. About how many ounces a day should a newborn consume? Preferably involving breast milk, but in general would be just dandy as well. Any final answers?
Can’t tell you. Anything to do with babies is a YMMV kinda thing. Some are content on relatively little; others eat like pigs. (My own son included; I’ve seen this kid put away adult portions of food, and I had to introduce solids because he was taking in excess of 8-10 oz. at a feeding.)
IIRC, as long as the baby is really wetting (not pooping) 5-6 diapers per day, she’s in good shape. If you’ve got concerns that s/he’s not eating enough, talk to your pediatrician.
Robin
What Robyn said. For breastfed babies, unless the mother is exclusively pumping her milk for some reason, there’s really no way to tell how much the baby is getting in ounces. The yardstick you use is how many wet diapers the baby is producing. If you’re concerned that a particular baby isn’t getting enough to eat, you should probably call your pediatrician and they’ll be able to tell you more.
Let’s see. When the squirt was brand new, she ate every 2 hours, about a half ounce each time (formula).
So that’d be what? 6 ounces a day, total?
Not sure about breastfed babies. Just watch for wet diapers. If the kid’s hungry, don’t worry. He or she will let you know. Loudly 
All 3 of my babies in the first 4-6 weeks or so drank about 4 ounces every 3 to 4 hours. If your baby’s not getting enough to eat, you’ll definitely know.
It’s never a good idea to introduce solids until 4 months- the tongue isn’t mature enough to swallow solids safely. Never put cereal in a baby’s bottle. Your pediatrician can tell you every detail you’ll ever need to know about feeding your baby.
Though as far as I can tell (and I admit I’m not really an expert) babies eat when they need food and stop when they don’t.
To add to the responses provided so far, babies will go through growth spurts (or, at the very least, hunger spurts) where their eating habits may change drastically for a short time.
Our ped already is concerned. 
Our baby doesn’t know when he is hungry- a byproduct of being early. So we wake and feed him every 2 hours. I pump so we know much he eats. There are plenty of diapers in various forms. It’s weird though- he eats 12-15oz/day of breast milk, and still does not gain weight as he should. I forgot to ask ped today for an oz/day target. If he doesn’t gain by next week’s appointment, we will be supplementing with some sort of special formula.
sigh
In 12 days, our baby has yet to complain about being hungry.
And definitely no solids! Good lord no! Not for 6 months!
Sadly, not ours. He just sleeps. We have to wake him to get him to eat. He is very special.
I don’t have time to search for any specific threads, but I’m sure you’ll find plenty of info here, along with about a million other questions you might not even think to ask. Good luck.
IIRC most babies don’t gain weight for around 2 weeks. Ours lost a drastic amount of weight (IIRC around a pound) with a weak suck and poor production (despite heroic efforts, believe me) from my wife. We supplemented while my wife toiled to get her production up (pumping 30 minutes every 3 hours 24 hours a day, it was pretty miserable for her). The doctors weren’t overly concerned and about a week later she started putting on the pounds. My wife never made more than 25 ounces a day and for 4 months, the baby was nearly exclusively fed on breast milk.
A lot of the weight loss in newborns is the baby losing the fluids it carried while it was inside the mother’s body that it no longer needs.
P.S. Driving me crazy…wtf is IIRC?
If I Recall Correctly
Aaron got solids right at 4 months, and with his being tongue-tied, we had to be especially careful with consistency. His cereal was more like thin gruel until he could work his tongue enough to swallow anything thicker.
Robin
That was me, not The 27th Evil. Sorry.
Robin
A serious question like this needs frequent input from your pediatrician.
However, in general:
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babies lose weight in the first week or two after birth and it is important they get back to their birthweight after two weeks
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the baby needs to have regular measurements of length, weight and head-circumference to rule out “failure to thrive”. Baby should be gaining weight. Measurements should be plotted on culturally specific tables (e.g. Gujarati babies can be two standard deviations smaller than white British babies (q.v. OHCS))
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pediatricians use the 100-50-20 rule to estimate the number of calories required for growth. Based on research from the 50s, babies require about 100 calories per kg for the first ten kilograms
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babies generally know when they are hungry, and when feeding ad lib often wish to breast feed every 2-5 hours. There may be difficulties with milk letdown, latching on, etc. I assume you have seen a lactation advisor?
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some mothers do require supplementation of breast milk with an appropriate, properly mixed formula. Some babies require hospital admission.
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in general, solid foods should not be started for six months. Peanut butter and eggs are not appropriate until at least 2 or 3, and many pediatricians would also delay giving an infant citrus fruits.
Hope things are improving. How early was your newborn?
He was 3 weeks early. He weighed 6lbs, 4oz, and ended up dropping to 5lbs 8oz. We’ve been trying like the dickens to get him back to his birth weight since (2 weeks now).
He’s eaten between 18-20oz a day for the past few days, so how he isn’t gaining is a total mystery. We’ll see what the deal is at the enxt dr.'s appt this week.
You don’t say what his current weight is. However, as has been stated before, a baby generally needs 100 calories per kilogram per day to gain weight properly.
At 5.5 lbs (his lowest weight) he weighed 2.49kg.
According to Appendix B* of The Nursing Mother’s Companion, you take the baby’s weight in kilograms, and multiply by 6, rounding to the nearest whole number. This is the number of ounces of milk the baby needs in 24 hours.
An ounce of human milk has approximately 20 calories. Foremilk (watery stuff) will have less than this, because of its low fat content. Hindmilk alone may have more than this, because it is high in fat. If in doubt, try to feed hindmilk (collected after letdown occurs).
I would resist substituting the ‘special formula’ for breastmilk. Talk to your doctor about fortifying the breastmilk with HMF (human milk fortifier) or some other calorie booster. The immunological and other values of breastmilk are too great to simply replace it for the sake of mere calories. (One of my twins was born with a complex heart defect, and we fought for every gram of weight gain for a long time. She was receiving a number of fortifying stuffs at one point: protein, baby formula and HMF. At one point she was even getting long-chain something or other oil that gave her terrible diarrhea. But always, always in the base of my milk, the immunoglobulins of which could not be reproduced and which, for a preemie especially, are irreplaceable.
Have the doctors looked for a heart murmur? How about an undiagnosed UTI or other subclinical infection? These can cause poor weight gain in any newborn.