My practice is based in a multiple specialty clinic at a large New England university. We have five OB/GYNs and five Pediatricians. I have a "technologically advanced" electronic baby scales in my office, accurate to within two grams, and manufactured for test weighing babies before and after feeds. It is a very handy scales, since it give a weight within seconds, and it computes from kilos to pounds (and vice versa) with the flick of a button -- handy for me as I deal with an international population (and since I am "metric impaired"). That said, I could count on one hand the number of times each year I use the scales for test weighing. Test weighing is so fraught with possible pitfalls that I have to choose very carefully the times I utilize it. Technology is so seductive -- be it pumps, scales, etc. I find some parents wish for a magic cure for whatever doubts they harbor about their baby. Parents often arrive in my office "lusting" after a scales to use for test weighing; they want so badly to quantify the baby's intake. The lure of electric pumps is the same. (Maybe this phenomenon is exaggerated here, since this is an engineering college, but I doubt it.) I find I spend more time talking people out of renting or buying pumps and scales than I do using this technology. When do I use my scales for test weights? The **most common** use I make is as a "reality check" for parents who have a baby who is doing well, but who want to supplement because they cannot believe baby is "getting enough." Despite the fact that the baby has rolls of fat, despite the fact that the baby is putting out lots of stools, the fact that the baby sometimes cries after BF translates to some parents -- and grandparents :-( -- that mom doesn't have enough milk. For these parents, weighing the baby in my office after a few minutes of BF is often a revelation. *Rarely* there are some babies who appear to be doing well -- even appearing to have the open-pause-close jaw actions of a baby suckling perfectly -- who are just not transferring milk. A test weight can be instructive in these cases (and, as I said, these babies are few and far between). Every few years I have a parent who buys or rents a scales (not from me, I don't rent or sell scales) to do test weighing at home. I strongly discourage it. One mother in my practice weighed her baby before and after EVERY FEED for SIX MONTHS! She would call and discuss the baby with me, and she got to the point where she would laugh about her actions -- but she persisted. We did learn something from her "data." She saw that her baby would gain weight very unevenly, coasting along for several days before shooting up. She also discovered that the baby took the same amounts of milk each day, even when he changed his schedule around (and slept longer). She also discovered that he thrived on fewer ounces per day than would be expected by formula use. She continued BF for over two years, but gave up weighing after the sixth month. Now she comes to our BF Moms group and tells new moms why they shouldn't worry about scales! I have sent my scales home with parents on a handful of occasions. These have been for babies where intake was being monitored carefully (usually premature infants, or for twins/triplets) and in cases where the parents are caught in "circular thinking" (also known as "crazy making behavior")-- more often than not generated by the baby's medical provider. These parents are terrified that the baby won't gain weight, or might lose weight; they are too ready to supplement with formula. They are worrying from one feeding to the next, unable to fight off the sense the baby needs more (formula) at the end of each feeding. For these parents I ask them to go ahead and do test weights, but to supplement ONLY if the 24 hour total is falling off dramatically. I am careful to let them know that human milk can't be analyzed by weight, since caloric count varies (sometimes dramatically) from formula. Most of the time, if parents can see baby isn't losing weight each day things calm down. Having a few days data often stops the medical provider from pushing formula use, as well. If I didn't have a scales with so many bells and whistles I don't think my practice would be negatively impacted. Since the technology is "out there" I find that parents incorporate these things into their "ways of knowing" about their baby. We are a society where the fact that generations of babies have been easily and fully nourished by mothers' milk has been undermined by several decades of ingeniously crafted formula marketing. As long as most babies are still fed by methods that allow the number of ounces ingested to be measured, I doubt we can divorce doubt from breastfeeding. [Sigh] [But we keep on trying, right!] Margery Wilson, IBCLC Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA where it was 75F today and will be 40F tomorrow!