>Hi all,
>
>What we hear here, is that HCP's seem to be inclined to use 
>WHO-charts on bf babies and the formula ones on formula fed babies.
>This is *so* weird...! It is like measuring people with a high blood 
>pressure or with overweight on a schedule that gives averages of 
>people with high blood pressure or overweight and then to say: "You 
>are fine, you fall within normal average lines and figures of people 
>with this condition." I try to explain this in my groups, but even 
>bf moms sometimes have a hard time understanding why this procedure 
>is wrong. Society might get frightened, if the new, biologic 
>standard would be applied to all babies...!

I understand your question, Marianne, but in fact we *don't* know if 
formula fed babies should be judged against the physiologically 
normal chart (ie the WHO chart)....as bf babies tend to grow slightly 
faster than ff babies in the early weeks, judging the ff babies with 
this standard might mean that babies are given *more formula* simply 
to attain the same measurements as the bf baby....this might be a 
good thing, or it might be a bad thing, who knows?

Later on, when bf babies actually appear lighter than the ff babies, 
is the 'right' thing to do to withhold formula, to make the ff babies 
appear as light as their bf counterparts?

We just don't know.

You're saying the WHO chart should be the benchmark for all babies, 
and this of course is correct at a population level, or for 
observation, but for tracking the *individual growth* of *individual 
babies*, it may be that we do need a different set of charts.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK

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