A comment from Rachel:
In my experience, pediatricians are expecting babies to regain birthweight
by 2 wks. If a baby is 3 oz under at 10 days, they are not too
concerned.>>
I have to say that if an 8# baby lost 8% of birth weight and was 7# 6oz on
day 3, I would not expect him to be back to 8# by 10 days. That would be a
rather (in the US, anyway) unrealistic gain of 10 ounces in 7 days. If,
however, he was 7-13, 3 ounces under birth weight at day 10, I would be very
happy because I can see that he is gaining at the acceptable rate of an
ounce a day.
I'm a bit concerned that we are focusing way too much energy on babies
regaining birth weight by 10 days or 14 days, and not nearly enough on how much
they lost (and why), and how much they are gaining at this point.
If you haven't read Joy Noel-Weiss' (et al) article in the International
Breastfeeding Journal, "An Observational Study of Associations Among Maternal
Fluids During Parturition, Neonatal Output, and Breastfed Newborn Weight
Loss" I suggest you all do so. She gives some very cogent reasons as to why
BIRTH weight should NOT be the reference weight for weight loss in
newborns, and why a 24 hour weight as the reference point makes a lot more sense
given the amount of diuresis that goes on in the first 24 hours, based in
part on the amount of IV fluids the mother receives in labor.
Let's look at the WHOLE picture, not just the scale and the numbers and the
percentages....
Jan Barger, RN, MA, IBCLC, FILCA
Lactation Education Consultants
_www.lactationeducation.com_ (http://www.lactationeducation.com/)
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