Sharon -
You're right, no baby grows in a smooth "curve", but all you get on a growth
chart is the trend. At WIC, we weighed babies monthly, more frequently if we
had noted any probs or if babies had "fallen off the curve", whatever.The
growth curves of breastfed babies are somewhat different than formula-fed
babies - they tend to start out slower, and plateau at a couple of points a
little more noticeably (ecxept, of course, that there are always some BF
babies that just steam way ahead at first). The BF babies are also much more
likely to have "fits and starts" along the way.
Two thoughts I have about these differences:
1) It's these "irregular" peaks & plateaus that make peds pull out the old
"Gee-baby's-not-growing-as-well-as-we'd--like-better-add-some-formula"
speech If I had a nickel for every perfectly healthy thriving babe I've seen
whose ped has said that, I'd be a wealthy woman. I tell women to LOOK AT THE
BABY. So, as lots of folks have pointed out, we don't really know what
"normal" growth is in this country.
2) It's hard to tell with a formula-fed baby what his/her appetitite and
needs actually are, because almost always we "force feed" them, to some
extent (and with all the loving intentions in the world); almost always, we
try to get the baby to finish the bottle, or to eat the same amount at each
feeding, or to give more because the doctor, nurse, mother-in-law, whoever,
says "Oh, at two months he should be taking xx amount". It's really, really
hard to just let a bottle-feeding baby stop when the baby is satisfied - the
tendency is so strong to jiggle the bottle a little to "see if he's REALLY"
done, or think he hasn't had enough because there's still half an ounce left
in the bottle. Leading, once again, to the inevitable conclusion that we
don't know what normal is. (Have I mentioned that already?

The biggest problems we would have at WIC would be with breastfeeding babies
of Asian parents, whose parents were tiny themselves (and frequently very
anxious about BFing as well). We would frequently be on the phone to docs
who didn't seem to have noticed that this baby who's in the fifth percentile
belongs to a mother who's  85 pounds and 4' 9" tall herself. These are big
problems in WIC, because a small baby will be considered to have a "risk
factor", therefore needing to be seen more frequently at WIC, among other
things. And the whole thing is compounded by language and cultural
differences; many Asian women are much less likely to question an authority
figure's word, and sometimes they have difficulty understanding each other
at all, so it doesn't get discussed much. The doctor says "he's too small -
look on this chart here. He needs some formula." and the mother (reasonably
enough - who wants a puny little baby?) says "Oh, thank you" and stops to
buy it on the way home.

Cathy Bargar