>The difference between the words "solely" and "primarily" are a mute >point I don't think there a "mute" point at all, or even a MOOT point. Primarily means "most of the kids, most of the time." That is a far cry from claiming that the current NCHS/CDC/WHO/Ross Labs growth charts are "based on formula-fed babies" and therefore worthless for using with breastfed babies. As near as I can tell, most of the problems related to pediatricians using the growth charts to encourage formula supplementation of the breastfed baby are based on ignorance of how to read growth charts, and ignorance of how children grow, not the charts themselves -- not how much it says Johnny should weigh at 3 months. You have pediatricians who think all babies should gain steadily. And those who think anything below the 50th percentile needs to be watched. And those who think anything below the 25th percentile is failure to thrive. And those who think babies are supposed to always grow along the same percentile all the first year, instead of going from 95th to 20th or from 5th to 75th, or anything in between -- all of which can be perfectly normal for a particular baby. And those who think that parental and siblings growth rates are irrelevant. And those who don't understand "catch-down" growth for babies who are really big at birth. And those who don't understand that premature babies take about 3 years to 'catch-up' and so correcting for the length of prematurity should be done for about the first 3 years. And on and on and on and on. NOT TO MENTION that the "new and improved" growth charts floating around there purporting to be more accurate for breastfed babies -- at least the ones based on the DARLING studies of Kay Dewey and colleagues -- are based on babies who were 'mostly' breastfed on a 3-4 hour schedule and who 'mostly' slept alone in a crib in a separate room and were encouraged to sleep through the night at a very early age. Both the infrequent breastfeeding and lack of breastfeeding at night can compromise the quantity and quality of the mother's milk, and the baby's milk intake, leading to poorer growth than you would have seen if those babies had been fed on-cue around the clock. I urge everyone (as I have repeatedly here on LactNet) to AT LEAST wait until the new WHO growth charts come out in 2003. And even then, DO NOT EXPECT that they will solve the problems that come from pediatricians misusing the charts. I fear that while today we may have breastfed children inappropriately labelled as 'slow gaining' or even 'failure to thrive' from using the current NCHS/CDC/WHO/Ross Labs charts, what we'll have in the future are breastfed children inappropriately labelled as 'doing fine' from using charts derived from babies who were fed on a schedule and not at night. Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. Expert in child nutrition and growth and development P.S. Poland had its own charts for many years. Poland, like England, had a number of indigenous growth experts who conducted studies and produced charts for local use. _________________________________________________________________ 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