Supplies for Babies and Children: How to Size the Stockpile by Weight and Age

Every planning number on this site is an adult's number: a gallon of water a day, 2,000 calories, 45 pounds of dry staples a month. A one-year-old drinks a quart and eats 800 calories, and still needs the whole gallon, because most of a small child's water is washing, bottles and clean-up, not drinking. This page is the arithmetic: how to size water, food, formula, diapers and medicines for a child by weight, and a worked example for a family of four with a toddler and a seven-year-old.

Doctors size a child's fluids by weight with a rule that is easy to carry in your head: 100 milliliters per kilogram for the first 10 kilograms, 50 per kilogram for the next 10, 20 per kilogram above that. In pounds and ounces, that comes to roughly 1.5 ounces per pound up to 22 pounds, then about three quarters of an ounce for each pound after, then a third. It covers a resting child in mild weather; heat, fever, vomiting and diarrhea push it up fast, and the medical page covers what to do then.

The right column is the one to store from. The drinking share of a gallon is small for a child, and the rest is not optional: bottles mixed and washed, hands and faces, a diaper blow-out at two in the morning, the cup that gets knocked over. A child uses the washing half of the gallon harder than an adult does, so the gallon stands. The margin the table shows you is where the drinking water comes from on a hot day or during a stomach bug: a toddler at 40 ounces instead of 32 is still well inside the gallon.

Formula changes the arithmetic, because it is made of water. A baby on 32 ounces of formula a day drinks a quarter of a gallon of your stored water before anyone washes anything. Store it as a line of its own, in the clean water guide's cases and jugs, and keep the first week's share as sealed bottled water so there is no treatment step between the jug and the bottle.

Calories scale by weight too, and children need more per pound than you do: about 100 calories per kilogram in the first year, 80 from 1 to 3, 70 at 4 and 5, 60 to 65 from 6 to 8. From about 9 a child's needs climb toward an adult's 2,000 and a growing ten-year-old eats like one, so plan the full adult share from 9 up.

The food shopping list is built per adult per month: about 48 pounds of dry goods, 45 cans, a quart of oil. Add the children as fractions of a person and buy to the total. Rounding up is cheap; a child who is hungry in week two is not. Two things the list does not say because it assumes adults: a child under 4 cannot eat most of a survival pantry as it comes, so some of their share has to be food that needs no chewing and no cooking (oatmeal, shelf-stable milk, purees, canned fruit, nut butter spread thin), and a child eats five or six times a day, not three, so the snacks are rations, not treats.

Milk is the toddler's water and food in one. A one-year-old drinks two to three cups a day, which is about a gallon to a gallon and a quarter a week; shelf-stable boxed milk keeps for months unopened, and powdered milk keeps for years and rebuilds a cup with eight ounces of your stored water. The oatmeal packets are the easiest child's breakfast in the pantry.

Under a year, the baby's whole diet is the one thing on this list that cannot be substituted, borrowed or made, so it comes first and goes deepest. If the baby is formula-fed, store the formula the baby already uses: a switch under stress is a sick baby.

How much formula

The pediatric rule is about 2.5 ounces of formula a day for every pound the baby weighs, to a ceiling of about 32 ounces in 24 hours. A 15-pound baby is at the ceiling; most babies are from about four months on. A can of powder in the 12 to 13 ounce size makes roughly 90 ounces (check the can; most run one level scoop per two ounces of water), which is about three days at the ceiling. So:

Powder is the cheap, long-keeping form. Keep a few ready-to-feed bottles or cartons alongside it for the day the water is in doubt: ready-to-feed needs no water at all, which is the whole point of it in a flood or under a boil notice. Mix powder with bottled water or with water you have boiled and let cool, never with water you merely filtered, and never with water treated with iodine. Rotate by the date on the can; formula is dated for a reason.

Breastfed

A nursing mother is the formula factory, so her share grows: add roughly a quart of water and a few hundred calories a day to her ration, and store a small reserve of formula and bottles anyway, for the day her supply drops under stress or she is the one who is sick. A manual pump needs no power.

Diapers and wipes

Count your own week before you buy, then store the next size up as well as the current one: a baby outgrows the stockpile faster than you rotate it, and a diaper that is too small is the one problem on this page that gets worse by the hour. Wipes run about one pack a week in the first year; rash cream, a changing pad and a sealed bin for the used ones go with them. Cloth diapers and a bucket are the backup that never runs out, and the hygiene page covers washing with no running water.

Baby food

From six months, shelf-stable purees and infant cereal, bought in the flavors the baby already eats. No honey under twelve months, in anything, including the cough syrup on this site: infant botulism is the reason, and it is not a small one.

One to three is the awkward age for a pantry: too old for formula, too young for most of what is in the buckets. The half-ration rule covers the quantity; the form matters as much. Cut everything small, cook the grains soft, skip whole nuts, hard candy and anything a toddler can choke on while nobody is watching, which in an emergency is often. Shelf-stable milk, oatmeal, canned fruit in juice, nut butter, soft beans and the freeze-dried pouches rehydrated a little wetter than the packet says cover a toddler's week.

Diapers run four to six a day at this age, and a toddler mid potty-training goes backwards under stress, so keep the diapers one more season than you think. A potty seat that fits a bucket, a sippy cup that does not spill the stored water, and a comfort item they chose go in the same bin.

From four to ten a child eats from the family stock as two thirds of a person and can carry their own bag: water, snacks, a blanket, a light and a whistle, at a tenth of their body weight, in a pack they picked. The bug-out bag page covers who carries what. A child this age also needs a job in the plan (the headlamp, the count of the water jugs, the dog); a child with a job is calmer than one being carried.

Children's medicines are dosed by weight, not age, and the right dose of the wrong strength is a hospital trip. Keep the weight-based dosing chart from the label or your pediatrician in the kit with the bottles, a syringe or cup that measures in milliliters, and the child's current weight written on the lid in marker. Children's acetaminophen and children's ibuprofen in liquid form (ibuprofen is not for babies under six months), an oral rehydration solution in packets, a thermometer, and whatever the child takes every day with a 30-day reserve. Adult tablets split in half are not a children's dose.

Dehydration is the emergency that reaches a small child first. Oral rehydration solution started early, a spoonful every few minutes, is the treatment; the medical page covers the signs (no tears, dry mouth, no wet diaper in eight hours) and when a child needs care sooner than an adult would. For a nuclear event, potassium iodide is dosed by age and the child's dose is on the KI page; children are the first priority for it.

Two adults, a one-year-old at 22 pounds who is off formula and on milk, a seven-year-old at 50 pounds, planning for two weeks.

The total is the adult plan plus about a third: not twice the water, not twice the food, but every line of the baby's reserve from scratch. Do the same arithmetic again in six months; the weights on this page are the ones that change.

• A full gallon a day stored for every child, the first week of a baby's share as sealed bottles
• Formula the baby already uses: five cans for two weeks, a few ready-to-feed, rotated by date
• Shelf-stable or powdered milk for the toddler: about a gallon and a quarter a week
• Children counted as fractions on the food list; soft, no-cook food for under 4
• Two weeks of diapers in the current size and a week in the next; wipes; rash cream; a sealed bin
• Children's acetaminophen and ibuprofen, ORS packets, a thermometer, the weight-based chart, the weight on the lid
• A 30-day reserve of anything a child takes every day
• A bag for every child who can carry one, at a tenth of their weight, with the family numbers on a card inside
• One comfort item each, chosen by the child, in the bin and in the bag
• Weights, sizes and doses re-run every six months