Barbara adds her thoughts on the topic of weight and wonders if any of us care to comment on the normality of faltering growth early on.
I do.
Michel Odent observed that babies born at home and in constant contact with mothers did not seem to experience what we who work in hospitals have come to view as the physiologic weight loss in the first few days after birth.  They started at birth weight and went straight upward.
In my purely subjective view, I am not surprised that a newborn would thrive in the literal sense, in close contact with mother, who feels, smells, sounds and tastes GOOD.  We know that babies observed in cots the first two hours post partum manage to stay warm, but it costs them something.  They cry more, and their blood sugar is lower at the end of that time, compared to babies observed on mother's body in the same period.  All that energy could be put into growth instead, and the growth trajectory shows this very clearly in normal cases.
Any barrier between babies and breasts, be they hospital schedules, cultural attitudes about what babies "should" or "shouldn't" do or how often they should do it, maternal problems like a new c-section incision, nipple shields, ANY barrier, will affect milk transfer.  A baby who is accepting less food than needed for convincing growth may be a depressed or otherwise vulnerable baby and I agree with Barbara that faltering growth early on is abnormal.  We should react as to alarm bells and red lights and find out what is going on.  Scales would be one of many tools to use, though not for pre- and post- feed weighing in the absence of documented heart or renal failure necessitating exact calculation of intake and output.
Today, with all the posts on weighing fresh in my mind, I made myself aware of why I was weighing babies.  My job consists of a quick global check of mothers and babies around the 5th postpartum day, shortly after discharge from hospital, to do PKU tests on babies and to catch common problems in the bud-- things like stitches healing poorly, constipation in mother, serious illness, but mainly BF difficulties.  Today I predicted the direction of each baby's weight curve before placing them on the scales, explaining to the parents what parameters I was basing my prediction on.  Wasn't wrong once, and I will continue to weigh babies on such occasions because I don't see it as undermining breastfeeding in this context.  It makes a difference that I practice in a breastfeeding culture.  It takes more than weighing a baby to disempower a woman here.  I am not saying it can't be done, or even that we don't do it, just that it takes a bit more than one net weight to do so!
Rachel Myr
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Kristiansand, Norway, where I am increasingly thankful for the sensible Norwegian attitude toward infant feeding expressed in our laws, our culture, and through these, our practice.

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