Hi All,

 

Jan 24th I went to see a new mom of twins.  Identical twin boys born
1-16-07, at 5'15 and 6'8 - 37 wks gestation - home on day 3 (1-19-07).
Neither was doing so great - no real weight gain, peeing lots - scant
poopies, latch on difficulties and sore nipples - very sleepy.  One baby was
doing better than the other but not by much - mom was missing babies feeding
cues and feedings were pretty spaced out and the milk supply was a bit low.
Corrected the latch and positioning, taught mom how to watch for signs of
swallowing, breast compressions - the works - babies did well and took in an
appropriate amount at breast (per BabyWeigh scale and observation).  Mom was
very happy to continue to stay in bed and feed babies.  She has a 25 month
old who breastfed for 20 months so knew the drill - just was surprised how
different it was with twins.  

 

She rented my scale because she wanted to keep an eye on the babies weight
gain and bought some herbs to help give her milk supply a jump start -
neither of these was something I said she needed to do - but could do if she
wanted and did not need to be purchased through me.  I felt that she had
picked up on things well enough that they would be fine in a couple days -
babies were not, in my opinion, at huge risk.

 

Mom weighed each baby daily between 9am and 9:30 am - these were naked
weights.  She did NO pre/post weighs at all.  She marked down on her
calendar each day the babies' weights.  When she showed me her calendar I
was thrilled because the information was just what I had always suspected
but now could see documented.  Parents are told that babies need to gain an
avg of .5 - 1 oz per day.  So they think if baby doesn't gain that there is
something wrong.  However, what I saw with these two babies is that not only
do they gain daily but they also LOST some days!  Some days they had huge
gains - like 6 - 8 oz!   I have always believed that babies must gain and
lose as the days go on and that what we are looking for is that average per
week - I have never believed that babies gained exactly 'X' oz per day to
get to that average we are all looking for.

 

Mom very happily gave me a copy of the data and permission to use.  The
spreadsheet is too cumbersome to try and post here - but if anyone would
like to see it I'd be happy to forward the information.  I am thinking about
asking a couple of my other moms with older babies if they'd be interested
in doing a similar thing for me (free use of the scale) so I can get some
documentation of older babies too.just a thought! 

 

Now maybe I am being naive and I should have already known all this, but I
don't recall any studies or research out there showing this information.

 

Anyway, if you'd like to check it out - let me know!  I am thinking about
putting this information on my website to show parents how babies can gain
weight - a kind of snapshot of how it looked for these babies who were
exclusively breastfeeding - no supplements - no scheduling - completely on
demand.  

 

Warmly,

Jaye


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