Hi Annette, I am not exactly sure what you are asking. It seems the baby is term and well, you did not give the birthweight but in my experience typical weight loss is 6 or 7% between birthday and day of discharge around day 2. And then babies typically are back to birthweight by 10 days to 2 wks, although 2 wks to me is pretty late. When things are going very well babies are often back to birthweight by day 4 or 5 in my experience. If the baby is still 13 oz under birthweight at 16 days old this does indicate the baby is not getting enough to eat. If the baby is taking in sufficient volumes and is still not gaining, further workup is needed looking for infection, cardiac, or metabolic. If I am reading you right, the Mom is resistant to giving formula, but is willing to provide bf, own ebm, and donor ebm. If sufficient volumes are provided, this will put weight on the baby and formula will not do so any better (if that is what the doctor is thinking, which some do). So there should be no argument as far as the ability of human milk to provide the volume/calories. The baby may be feeding poorly at this point, and often will need milk provided by alternate method, syringe, dropper, cup, bottle, or lactation aid at breast. The baby will have catch-up growth, once provided sufficient volume/calories, in my experience 4 to 8 oz overnight once fed generously by alternate method, and recently had one gain 10 oz! Then the typical weight gain is often 1 oz per day for those early months. For this mom it seems that she would explore with you how to provide sufficient volumes of human milk in the most comfortable, enjoyable, and also efficient manner (meaning I wouldn't think feedings should last hours), ways to increase milk production (expressing after feeds, herbs, reglan/domperidone). If feeds are lengthy then sometimes baby is getting a good volume at a feed but only gets 6 or 7 feeds/24 hrs and total 24 hr volumes are too low. I do, personally, like the lactation aid method, but mom may not. Are you familiar with the book Making More Milk by Marasco and West, that is a very good reference for Mom. Laurie Wheeler, RN MN IBCLC MISSISSIPPI USA *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome