Theresa, your discussion of weight gain was interesting. I was always very fortunate that I had a doctor who looked at my children wholly & did not jump to decisions based on growth charts, or artificial timelines. For example, my 2nd (& 4th, but by then it wasn't an issue as I had been through it before) did not eat solids until 10 months or so (unless you count beach sand) & then very minimally. He was not concerned & said that babies could do fine on just breastmilk til a year or so. I had previously been to a doctor (I was doctor changing/hunting) who had told me to "force the issue" with him and got my all worried about anemia. All of my babies were fairly big at birth, ranging from 8lbs.3 to 9lbs 10. All of them were quite big chubby babies early on(with the exception of a bad period with #1), but the two late-eaters slimmed down at around 9 months or so while the two eat everything children continued to be chunky til 5 and 6 approximately. It is one of the fascinating things about having several children,observing things like this, weight patterns, food preferences and so on. As for babies who are small, don't you find that there are 2 categories: the babies who are tiny made but still chubby in their own delicate way and the other babies that you feel concern about, they have an old look to them, the fat is minimal, their eyes look big and perhaps sunken. These are the babies that need help whether it be breastfeeding management (hopefully) or supplementation. These are the babies that cause me to lose sleep. Sometimes their mothers cannot see it I suspect. My own first was starving for awhile and my husband and I did not see it. And you see pacifiers going in instead of the breast, or babies being walked instead of the breast, and that scares me. Going no-mail for a week or so.OFf to visit in-laws in Montreal & then Jo-Anne Elder-Gomez for a few days (so Jo-Anne - save me any interesting Lactnet posts or links okay - see you soon) Deborah Sowery-Quinn canada Because I wasn't able to attend the LLLI conference, I picked some of the sessions I would have liked to attend and ordered the tapes. Yesterday I listened to one on case studies and was very intrigued by some of the information on weight gain. The LC explained that new studies suggest a baby should gain at least an ounce a day and should be gaining about 2 pounds a month. This has been a particular interest of mine because my daughter (now almost 23) was a slow-gaining baby. She was born weighing 8 pounds, and gained approximately a pound a month in the early months, slowing down after 6 months or so. She weighed just over 17 pounds at a year. She was exclusively breastfed, started solids at about 10 months and even at a year ate only small amounts. As an adult, she is 5'2" tall (same as me) and weighs about 100 pounds (as I did at her age). (And she's just graduated at the top of her program in university, so there seem to be no intellectual deficits from lack of food!) My doctor was completely supportive and told me that a baby's birthweight is influenced by many factors and does not correlate with weight as an adult. The child's weight at one year, however, does correlate with height and weight as an adult. So while my daughter was at the 75% percentile at birth, and the 20% at one year, the doctor did not see that as a problem. I have passed this advice/information on to other parents. Recently I was working with a mother whose baby was born weighing 10 lbs. 4 oz. - top of the charts! The parents were average sized, a bit bigger than me but certainly not unusually tall or heavy. The baby gained weight very slowly but steadily and at 5 months is approaching the middle range of the chart. I see this as a baby who was "overweight" at birth and is now "growing down" to his expected size. My own records as a baby show that I was born weighing 5 lb. 8 oz. and weighed about 17 pounds at a year! In my daughter's case, she just doubled her birth weight, in my case I tripled mine. Yet we both ended up about the same size. I wondered if anyone has more information on this. Is my information inaccurate? What should we be telling parents about weight gain in their babies? When is supplementation necessary? Teresa Pitman Guelph, Ontario _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html