Dear all:

I finally found a reference for doubling birth weight on p 109 of  my old 5th Edition copy of Lawrence "Breastfeeding: A guide for the medical profession.  The reference she lists is Hambraeus L:  Pediatr Clin North Am 24:17, 1977.  They give the days required to double birthweight as 180 days.  They had other species such as the horse, which took 60 days and the rate which took 6 days.  180 days is quite different from my calculations off of the WHO charts of between 103 - 130 days for girls and 83 - 130 days for boys (from the 1st to the 99th centile).  Since it takes longer for heavier babies to regain their birth weight -- all I can think of is that there must have been a lot of overweight babies in the sample that was used for the original estimate of doubling birth weight.  

For some reason this "rule" has always troubled me, even more so now that I've done the math from the WHO charts.

Best, Susan Burger

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