Hi all,
Here is the latest of the case where the baby and mom are in hospital already for the second week.
After taking the baby off the breast totally and giving hydran (I imagine that is like pedialyte) and IV fluids for the past 24 hours there doesn't seem to be much improvement. The dr. has told the mom that she cannot bf for now and she can expect that they will stay on in hospital for another two weeks. They are calling it Lactose intolerance. (would that not have manifested before two months of age?) after the various trial and error treatments including the various solutions and formulas (nutrmagen and pregestimil) there has been no weight gain, continued liquid stools (diarrhea) and now they say that she has had a bit too much hydration - very puffy and it seems that the hydran which also contains sugars has not been optimal.
So, the bottom line is that they are starting to give her 50 cc pregestimil and 50 cc hydran. The mom feels that she cannot cope with this, is very discouraged re bf because being her 3rd child she was confident that she would succeed with this one (the previous 2 bf relationships also ended early for various reasons).

Now, after thinking about this and encouraging her and telling her that she is in the hands of competant drs. and we have to be patient etc.....I also am reviewing all of the info that I have including Jack Newman's book which says the baby will recover more quickly if kept on the breast.  I am trying to find more medical sources to support this.  

Keren, thank you for your encouraging letter, and I agree that I had to get back to this mom and ask her if she wanted to pursue this further. I would agree that she should either bring in the medical sources to encourage her drs. to work with her, or get another opinion. I would love to hear from Dr. jack. or other MD's who have had experience in continued bf in cases such as these. With your recommendations I could approach bf drs. that we know (thanks Hannah Catzman, LLL Petach tikva for helping with your dr. friend in same hospital) and they in turn could, perhaps in a friendly way make suggestions.

The baby has lost more than 500 grams in all this. Quite scary. 
The mom wants to hear more. She has happily agreed to keep pumping til we get all these answers. She always wanted to carry on bf, but after hearing that it would be more than two more weeks of pumping she got pretty frustrated. Can';t blame her.

Well, sorry this is so long.
thanks for all your input and have a nice weekend!

Ellen Shein, Tel Aviv

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