Gonneke asks what the point is of undressing the baby if all you want to
find out is how much the weight of one feeding is.
There is no point.  To do a pre and post feed weighing, the baby is weighed
first on an accurate scale, noting what the baby is wearing and/or wrapped
in.  Then the baby is fed, and then weighed again with exactly the same
clothing or wraps, on the same scale.  If you change a diaper between the
first and the second weighing, the whole procedure is rendered completely
meaningless, although I suppose some would argue that the procedure is
meaningless to begin with :-)
Whatever is in the diaper after the feed was in the baby before the feed and
contributed to the pre feeding weight.

What frustrates me, and disempowers mothers enormously, is the practice of
simply weighing a baby naked once a week, which seems to be how some
well-child clinics practice 'breastfeeding support'.  If the weekly weight
gain is over whatever their accepted limit is, then everything is all right,
even if baby is obviously unhappy much of the time and mother is concerned
about breastfeeding problems.

If the weekly weight gain is under the limit, no matter how happy and
otherwise flourishing the baby is, the usual response where I live seems to
be to look worried and make a new appointment for a week later, to repeat
the ritual.  Three seems to be a magic number in this belief system.  After
three consecutive unsatisfactory naked weights, mother will be told that she
is just as good a mother even if she doesn't exclusively BF or even BF at
all, and that she must start supplementing.  If I had ever heard of even one
case from a well-child clinic near me where the PHN actually sat with the
mother while she fed her baby and watched the whole process, I would feel
better. Of the mothers who contact our clinic, not one has ever had that
experience.  Of course, the ones who do get more skilled help are unlikely
to contact us when they have already gotten the help they need.

When mothers leave the postpartum ward, we weigh the baby naked as they are
getting dressed in their own clothes.  Some of the staff get all
discombobulated if the baby has just been at the breast, because 'the naked
weight won't be right.'   I say, what does it matter?  The milk is going to
become part of the baby anyway.  Besides, when mothers are going home 30-48
hours post partum, the volumes ingested by the baby will barely register on
the scales anyway.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

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