Good questions, Jan.

Here's my 2 cents worth:  Dewey et al have documented that the average
intake per baby in the first 6-ish months is 600-800 ml/day. If you take the
high average of 750 ml, that's about 24 ounces, or one ounce per hour. If
the baby is not gaining well, I want the baby to be taking in an average of
an ounce an hour of SOMETHING - milk from the breast, cup, spoon (etc) or
some other nutritious fluid somehow. If the baby takes two ounces, it's good
for two hours max. If he only takes 1/2 ounce, I want mom to try feeding him
again a half-hour later.

I've never found this written down anywhere - this is my educated strategy,
a theoretically reasonable approach. Mom & dad should be carefully
documenting all this, of course. A "good" feed is defined as the baby taking
roughly an ounce in 10 minutes of active sucking with swallowing. This is
very rough - the best way is to do pre and post feed weights on a sensitive
digital scale.  (Which is probably TOO much attention if the problem is
minor.)

If the supplement is given in a way that the baby can stop when he's had
enough, that should avoid the risk of overfeeding.  If nothing else, this
strategy (hopefully) helps parents understand that babies need to feed very
often. Making a baby wait for food is not in the baby's best interest.

Linda J. Smith, BSE, FACCE, IBCLC
Bright Future Lactation Resource Centre www.bflrc.com
6540 Cedarview Ct., Dayton, OH 45459-1214 USA
(937) 438-9458 email [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(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html