For all practical purposes you can assume that one gram of breastmilk is one
ml.  Since we virtually never know exactly how much milk a baby wants, the
approximation will not affect any clinical decisions except for the baby who
is in renal or heart failure where strict monitoring of intake and output
are necessary.  Not something most of us are likely to run across, ever, and
when we meet that baby, we can assume there will be a scale and some expert
team of specialists to tell us what we're supposed to do with it.

The other uncertainty is that every ounce of breastmilk is different,
nutritionally.  So the fifth ounce a baby takes in the course of an
evening's roaming buffet will have a very different nutrient content from
the first ounce the same baby takes at a pre-dawn feed after having slept
for several hours, and both will be different from the final ounce at that
morning feed.  What do you do with them bananas??  It reminds me of a family
joke remark, repeated whenever someone asks a question for which the answer
is unconnected to any meaningful frame of reference in the questioner: 'are
you any wiser now?'

What I am trying to say is that knowing the exact amount of milk taken, down
to the milligram, is not as useful as watching the baby at the breast,
seeing whether it is content and the mother is comfortable, and watching the
baby's growth, behavior and general health over time, like days or weeks,
rather than single feeds.  Even in the exceptions where one does need to
know something about milk transfer at a single feed, you don't need to know
down to twenty-ninths of an ounce.  Just act as if milk weighed a gram per ml.

If you are not convinced about the general lack of need to know exact
amounts taken at one isolated feed for the vast majority of babies, think
about how you try to answer the parents when they ask 'How much should the
baby get at a single feeding?'

Rachel Myr
glad for her own overtaxed brain's sake that at least here in Europe she can
do the calculations in base ten, rather than base 16 - still only have ten
fingers :-)

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