Hi, I see the topic of weighing, particularly test weighing, has not died 
yet.  I think it is interesting how much heat has been generated on this, 
and my sense is that weighing babies appeals to the professionals working 
with women for exactly the same reason as it might appeal to women.  In our 
western technological societies, weighing is congruent with our approaches 
to the natural world, our bodies and to the answers we give to the question 
of how to live our lives.  We trust numbers and science and external 
measures.  So, great, weighing uses these to help us give meaning to our 
lived experiences of breastfeeding and our lived experiences of being the 
helpers of breastfeeding women.  Hardly surprising that women in our 
societies often really enjoy having their babies weighed – by doing this 
they are participating in a meaningful interaction of motherhood and helpers 
are demonstrating competence in a socially approved way.  Like getting the 
first ultrasound scan – a huge pregnancy milestone here in the UK these days 
 -- weighing demonstrates a woman’s acquiescence in the social role allotted 
her as a mother: mothering through products and technology. 

However, in my personal lived experience of the meanings of breastfeeding 
and how it works best, I see a mismatch between the technological, 
production-driven, assembly-line approach to breastfeeding and its actual 
success in an emotional, relational way for women and babies.  Obviously 
this is my subjective ontological point of view.  Weighing may be a tool 
which, in western social conditions, may help to increase to a certain 
extent the number of ounces of breast milk consumed by babies.  However, 
will it help us to change the oppressive conditions women and babies are 
currently socialised in, which limit and regulate how when, where and why 
women can offer their babies the breast?  I don’t think so.  In my research 
(ON ROUTINE WEIGHING) I observed the opposite.  Test weighing seems to me 
not to particularly challenge these conditions either, but I speak here 
without the back up of having conducted a study on this. 

An interesting and important question for those of us who have a long term 
interest in promoting breastfeeding is whether the promotion of 
breastfeeding through a 'product' model, in which milk transfer and the 
production of breast milk are emphasised, indeed supervalued, will be 
helpful in the long run.  Does this way of promoting breastfeeding have a 
built in ceiling?  Would we be better off promoting a model of breastfeeding 
which emphasises the relationality of mothers and babies, what Penny van 
Esterik -- to whom I am endebted for the original idea for this dichotomy in 
ways of viewing breastfeeding -- called the 'process' model of infant 
feeding?  (Although it is not clear how on earth we could do this 
effectively.) 

I think some of the heat in this weighing debate is due to the fact that we 
actually have different positions on this question.  We should remember that 
without different viewpoints we risk creating a hegemonic definition of what 
breastfeeding is and what breastfeeding support is, and seeking to enforce 
these on all of the women we can reach.  How would that be helpful?  We need 
to develop nuanced positions on these issues. Breastfeeding involves every 
person on this planet.  Those of us seeking to protect the practice of 
breastfeeding from dying out altogether (which seems to be the way the 
global culture is moving) have a responsibility to create a professional 
praxis as well as foster popular cultural practices which enable 
breastfeeding to continue to exist – maybe even to flourish. 

Personally, I am very sceptical about the scientification of breastfeeding 
support in general, since I think it has the seeds of the destruction of 
breastfeeding inherent in it.  However, I hear loud and clear the voices of 
many women (mothers and professionals) for whom its abandonment would be too 
far outside their cultural comfort zone, and for whom it is a useful and 
supportive tool.  I would therefore urge a really thoughtful use of 
weighing.  I cannot speak about what is practiced outside what I have seen 
here in the UK, but the majority of practice I have observed does not reach 
this standard. 

Magda Sachs, PhD. 

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