"what I found with this baby was that although he kept 
accepting the breast and would do quite a valiant job of _trying_ to 
breastfeed, he simply was not able to take all the milk he needed 
until he reached the weight he should have been if all had gone 
well."

I find seriously underfed babies to be one of the easiest (at least at the start) situations to have.  All the mom has to do is pour in all the food the baby will take - her milk if she has it, other milks as needed - by whatever means works easily for mother and baby, and start rebuilding her own supply.  It doesn't matter what the original cause was, and it might not even be possible to know for a while.  The baby's personality changes, the mother's anxiety lessens, and nobody worries a whit about the baby's skills or the precise feeding method, at least for now.  It's all simply Feed The Baby and Protect The Milk Supply, in whatever ways that can get accomplished easily.  As one LC said, "We can sort out the utensils later."  

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com
soon to be 
www.normalfed.com

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