Barbara describes,

<< Lynn Duffy, Cassandra Muff and Jan Riordan presented a poster at the recent
 ILCA conf. about research they did looking at the weight loss of infants
 whose mothers had received IV fluids in labor vs infants of mothers who did
 not receive fluids.   The infants were all exclusively breastfeeding.  They
 were weighed at birth, and on Day 2-3 prior to discharge from hospt.  The IV
 fluid group (N=46) and the non-IV group (N=66) were controlled for infant
 age and gender.  The findings indicated that:  "The percent of weight loss
 in neonates of mothers who received labor intravenous fluids were not
 significantly different from those who did not.  Likewise, no significant
 differences were found when the amount of fluids were divided into levels of
 amounts (none, small, large).  The results indicate that intravenous
 infusions during labor are not linked with excessive neonatal weight loss
 early postpartum in exclusively breastfed infants." >>

Barbara, this is fascinating -- please tell us more.  First of all, I'm
absolutely astonished that they were able to find 66 women who received NO IV
fluids in labor!!  I don't believe we could find that many women in 3 or 4
years in our facility (birth rate of about 3600/year) who did not receive IV
fluids.  Did they look at any differences between women who were induced via
Pitocin vs. not?  My hunch is that since Pitocin is an antidiuretic, it isn't
the amount of IV fluids that the mom gets (per say), but the amount of
Pitocin that the baby gets that causes the fluid overload in the baby and
hence the subsequent unusual weight loss.  But that's not evidence based --
it's hunch based.

Jan Barger, currently soaking up the sun -- OK, OK, there's lots of stuff out
there that should cause guilt changing behavior, but I'm still doing it ---
in the Outer Banks of NC.

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html