Yep, that sounds about right to me. As a rule of thumb, the paeds
that I used to work with liked a weight gain of roughly 30g/day from
hospital discharge until 3 months. This is not absolutely carved in
stone, of course,but if a healthy baby is breastfeeding well, they
will gain at least this amount - sometimes as much as 250-400g a
week. And if the baby is not breastfeeding well - as evidenced by
consistently lower gain - then the quicker the reason is identified
and addressed, then the better it will be for the baby's nutrition
and the mom's on-going milk supply. There's always a reason for low
gain - if you can just find it. In practice, however, I find so
often that clinics and health visitors and such will reassure a
mother that a breastfed baby doesn't need to gain so much, and the
baby starts falling down the chart - and eventually someone wakes up
and sees that the baby is really not doing well, and it's often too
late to kick-start the milk supply again in time to prevent formula
supplements. It's just so much easier to take careful anticipatory
care in the very early weeks and jump in quickly with a little tweak
before the whole thing turns into a train-smash.
Just my 0.2ml
Pamela (who does a disappointingly large number of analyses of weight
charts for "exclusively breastfed" babies who are being referred to
Social Services for very low gain/failure to thrive when it's often
too late to avoid really necessary large formula supplementation -
can you tell I feel strongly about this???)
Well, I disagree with this fairly strongly. If you look at the WHO charts, you will see that the babies on the bottom curve (who are HEALTHY BABIES) are gaining less than 30 grams a day. The babies on the top curve are gaining more. But there is nothing wrong with those babies on the bottom curve!
I described in an earlier post my daughter who gained roughly half the 30 g a day you mention. She was healthy, she was breastfeeding well, there were no problems. I think it is very important to understand the variations in weight gain patterns - one of the good things about breastfeeding is that babies determine their own rate of weight gain and some are meant to be smaller than others.
I remember one mother I worked with whose baby was consistently gaining about four ounces a week. The doctor was concerned that it was not enough, and they tried a bunch of things: work on the latch, domperidone, switch feedings, etc. Nothing seemed to help. Finally the frustrated mother gave up and put the baby on formula. And the baby continued to gain about four ounces a week - refusing to finish the bottles of formula when she tried to feed him more. Now, of course, the doctor wasn't worried and said "well, babies are all different." She was pretty annoyed.
Teresa
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