>In a message dated 3/4/01 1:17:14 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
>>  To be clear, as apparently I wasn't earlier:)...the child weighed around 10
>>  pounds at 2 months-50% percentile, then at 4 months weighed 11 pounds 7%
>  > percentile, came in one month later for wt check-


Thanks for clearing up my confusion, Cheryl!  As I see it, there are
three possibilities:

1. The baby is naturally a slow gainer - one pound weight gain in two
months is very slow, but in the absence of other symptoms and
behaviours on the part of mother or baby, could be a variation of
normal

2. The baby has an undiagnosed problem of some sort - though there
would prob be other symptoms by now

3. The mother is simply not feeding often enough, or else is timing
the feeds and cutting them short - not feeding on cue, or not reading
the baby's cues, or thinking the baby should only have X minutes Y
times a day at the breast.

It's probably 3...and in any case, the best way to increase the
baby's intake is to increase supply which is to feed more often,
including more often at night.  This is a better stimulus to the milk
supply than pumping and giving ebm in a bottle, and avoids the risks
of bottles. Pumping's ok, but as an addition to the baby coming to
the breast as often as humanly possible, not instead of - IMHO. When
increasing a mother's supply the baby needs to feed more often than
most mothers would be able to pump - and if she is expressing, hand
expressing might useful to learn, as it does not require all the
fiddly stuff associated with keeping pumps clean.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

             ***********************************************
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