I imagine all of us have stories about unusual ways we’ve used the scales.
Here are some of my favorites:

*Spit up isn’t as much as it looks like.  We weighed a baby before and after
he threw up down his mother’s back.  No change in the number on the scale.
(Obviously it weighed something, but it must have been within the scale’s
margin of error.)

*Gulped milk may not amount to much.  We weighed a baby before and after her
initial gulping, and decided her gulping involved aerosol milk.  Very little
change in weight; the real gain came after the gulping stopped.

*Dad said, “my daughter can’t be getting as much from the breast as she does
from the bottle.  She takes 3 ½ ounces in 10 minutes!”  A dare I wouldn’t
take again… but by golly, it was 3 ½ ounces in 10 minutes!

*The accompanying aunt insisted, “There’s just no need for her to nurse him
so much or so often.”  The poor little baby, still mid-problems, showed his
aunt that a whole half-hour gave him only an ounce.

*The receding-jaw baby and his mother came weekly, just for fun, so we could
document the increase in intake as his jaw grew.

*The limp little premie who sat at the breast doing nothing at all astounded
us all by slugging down 3 ounces (by siphoning??  osmosis??), presaging
their oversupply issues.

One thing I’ve learned to add to any pre/post weighing is a question to the
mother before the second weighing:  “How did this nursing go?  About the way
it usually does?  Better than most?  Not as good as most?”  It’s helpful to
both of us to have that comparison of her perception and the number on the
scale.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  14850 USA

 

 

 


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