Dear Magda, We *know* growth spurts result in an increase in growth because often they result in a heftier weight gain than usual. A mother who is having her baby's weight gain monitored often notices this, after the fact, of course, i.e. they call and ask what is happening, you suggest it might be a growth spurt and encourage them to follow the baby's lead (taking the baby to bed to facilitate more frequent nursing) and they phone the next week to tell you that hey, the weight gain that was normally 5 oz. was 8 last week. Even if you are not monitoring weight gain, output improves. Bowel movements are often more frequent and yellower. So our judgment that it is a growth spurt seems to be accurate. Incidentally, even a baby who is breastfeeding very frequently can go through these growth spurts, although instead of wanting to BF more frequently (if he is already BF every hour or so his frequency is hard to surpass) the mother may just sense that he is hungrier. If this happens in an older baby, for instance, she may feel he is "nursing like a newborn" -- she is having stronger letdowns, she can hear or see or feel more swallowing, etc. during each feed. After solids are introduced, mothers still report the kind of growth spurt that changes BF patterns, even if the baby does not seem to want more solids. Question for you lactnetters: someone told me growth spurts occur every couple of months or so in the second and third years. Do we have any references on this? I know it is hard to talk about anything "typical" about iconoclastic-by-definition toddlers, but (it must be a good sign!) I'm getting a lot more toddler questions, and don't want to just go by my own experience. What happens to those toddlers who only BF morning, nap, evening and night? (never had one of those). Do they change their habits? Jo-Anne *********************************************** 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