I think we are having two discussions here.
Routine test weighing of healthy term babies has no place in evidence-based
breastfeeding support.  Not at birth, not at one week or one month or six
months.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Checking the intake of a baby when there is every reason to be concerned
that intake is a problem, is not the same animal at all, and there is very
definitely a role for this practice.   If it needs fixing, that way you have
a fighting chance at finding out what the fix is.
When parents are sent home with instructions to make sure baby gets enough
food, without knowing even remotely what that is, nor how to tell whether
baby has taken it, it doesn't build their confidence.  
Especially with the slightly pre-term babies who appear to be feeding well,
falling asleep and looking satiated but in fact are barely holding their
own, it gives the parents a much better idea of when to supplement with
expressed milk.
Can anyone tell I just heard Molly Pessl's talk about the supposedly term
baby?  
She outlined a plan of home care involving what many of us would feel was
obsessive monitoring of baby's intake, by way of pre and post weighing with
a rented scale at every single feed, recording the amount, and then every
eight or twelve hours seeing how close baby was getting to target intake
(estimated by the 150 ml per kilo body weight per 24 hours method), and
supplementing appropriately at those intervals.  This empowered the parents,
who were otherwise left wondering whether the baby truly was feeding well or
doing what Jack Newman calls 'pretending to feed', and might have
supplemented unnecessarily or excessively just to be sure baby was getting
plenty.
Molly is no fool and she would never in a million years advocate this for a
baby who is cuing to feed and feeding well as demonstrated by all the signs
we look for when we don't do pre- and post-feed weights.
Test weighing as part of the diagnostic workup when seeing a baby who is in
trouble for some reason is often a real eye-opener.  It's only part of it,
but it is not a trivial part.  None of us who use this tool, would rely on
it alone.  I would feel totally lost if the only thing I knew about a feed
was the difference in the baby's weight before and after.  But by putting
that puzzle piece in with all the other pieces I get by watching what
happens throughout the feed, and seeing the mother and the baby before,
during, and after it, I am better equipped to help them solve the problems
they are having.  I only see about 30 mothers and babies every week who are
having troubles of one kind or another, and a month may go by without me
feeling the need to do a pre and post feed weight check.  It's not the
cornerstone of my care, but that has more to do with the population I see
than with my attitude to test weighing.  The babies I use it with are the
grads of the NICU who are progressing to on-cue feeding, or older babies
whose growth or well-being is faltering.
In case anyone is wondering, I do naked weights of every baby I see, at
every contact, unless I know the naked weight from the same day, on a scale
identical to the digital scale we use throughout my community.  But how much
the baby is taking at a given feed is not usually info I need.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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