In reply to Elisa Hirsch, who noticed that some babies lose weight when
put on the scale after breastfeeding:  we notice this, too.  It is not a
scale error, if you are using an electronic scale such as the Olympic
Smart scale or the Sartorius scale.  Some babies take in no milk despite
what looks like good suckling (and maybe even audible swallowing!).
During the twenty minutes or more at the breast, the baby has evaporative
water losses, and if he doesn't take in any breastmilk, he may lose
weight.

Kathy Auerbach talked about how much better it is to tune the mother in to
watching her baby, instead of the scale.  I agree, when the infant is a
healthy newborn who is gaining 15-30 grams a day.  When the infant is
preterm or has a demonstrated inability to take in enough milk by
breastfeeding, we send him home with plans for frequent weight checks.

This week a mother took her premie twins home.  They were 33 weeks at
birth and almost 4 weeks old at discharge.  One of the twins consistently
took in less than 10 ml when breastfeeding without the SNS.  (His twin
sister did great--her post-feeding weights were consistently up 30-45
grams!).

After two days at home, (breastfeeding, pumping and using the SNS), the
boy had lost 5 ounces.  Then, Mom rented the new Medela BabyWeigh scale,
and in less than a week (with breastfeeding, SNS, pumping, and
finger-feeding help from Dad and IBCLC-doula), he's gaining!  Mom got rid
of the SNS yesterday, and if the scale is reassuring, she'll return her
rented pump and scale tomorrow.  Success story!