I remember being at the hospital helping a mother whose baby had been ill 
but was now recovering. Staff felt very strongly about doing pre- and post- 
feeds test weighings. The difficulty was that this mother (like many of the 
mothers I know!) believed in nurturing her baby at the breast, and we could 
never really figure out when a feeding began and ended, because the baby - 
like many babies I know - nursed on and off much of the time. She'd nurse on 
one breast for a few minutes, then take a break for maybe 5 minutes, go back 
to that breast, take another break (maybe dozing off for 10 minutes), nurse 
on on the second breast for a few minutes, fuss a little until mom picks her 
up and burps her and then she goes back to the second breast, nurses a few 
more minutes, fills her diaper, mom changes it and then she takes the first 
breast again... and so on. The staff were constantly frustrated because the 
could not figure out when was "before" and when was "after" as the baby came 
to the breast quite frequently around the clock.

I think one of the hazards of the test weighing idea is that it suggests 
babies SHOULD breastfeed in discrete "feedings" (ideally separated by 
several hours, I suppose). In fact, observations of tribal societies and of 
babies when they are permitted free access to their mothers' breasts, 
suggest that the natural tendency is for babies to eat this way - coming to 
the breast very frequently.

I did also work with one mother who had the resources to buy herself a scale 
and who weighed her baby before and after every feeding. While I would not 
have recommended this, it was interesting for me to see how much the 
feedings varied - the baby would take a large amount at one feeding and a 
much smaller amount at another. Same mother, same breasts, same baby. It 
made me wonder how useful a single test weighing would actually be, 
especially if the person interpreted this as being representative of all the 
baby's feeds.

Just some thoughts about this issue - who knew scales would be so 
controversial?

Teresa Pitman

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