Kathleen posts about a baby who stooling numerous times every day but had
not gained much weight.
Frequency of stooling is one indicator of several, never the only one,
amount, color and consistency are of interest as well.  And of coures
feeding behavior is at least as important to know about as what is coming
out the other end :-)
Kathleen, what was the baby's weight on day 2 when he had 11 stools?  What
was his lowest weight and when did it occur?  You wrote that on day 14 he
had only gained 4.5 ounces in 14 days.  I assume you don't mean he was 4.5
ounces over birth weight, and at 14 days I would not expect the baby to have
been gaining weight for more than 11 or 12 of those days.  The amount is
still low for 11 days, but without knowing on what day he bottomed out, I
can't make a judgment on his total gain.

There is also the possibility that milk transfer is adequate but absorption
is not.  I think this might have been a factor with my granddaughter before
her heart surgery, for example.  There was every indication that there was
plenty of milk and that she was taking in plenty of it, but because of her
low oxygen saturation her gut was not absorbing as much from it as it does
now.  She was still gaining better than a lot of healthy babies I have
followed for breastfeeding problems, but I expected her to be gaining more
based on how apparently well she was feeding.  I'm not suggesting this
little guy of yours has a heart problem :-)  But without knowing more than
frequency of stooling, we are missing essential information on which to
judge adequacy of intake.

How often, and how, was he feeding?  How was he acting otherwise?  What kind
of assessment of feeding was done between days 2 and 14?  How much was he
sleeping?  What cues was mother using to know when to feed him?

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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