Everyone is so aghast when this happens, and asks "why couldn't the parents tell" -- I have seen a number of cases over the years, away from the hospital,   and I see some commonalities between them, and current cases that lactnetters have been writing about.

People no longer live in extended families, or necessarily with groups of friends having babies. They do not have wide background of experience with babies and "normalcy," therefore they perceive infant as content, as it is not crying or fussy, and it sleeps for long periods of time.

Even when there are "home visits," by hospital or governmental services, they
are in the first day or so after the baby goes home, before anythings is seriously awry.  Then, in most cases, the first well-baby check is at two-weeks -- when the situation has progressed to an alarming extent.

Why couldn't parents "see" that the baby was starving?  When you are with
the baby all the time, you can not see that it is losing weight -- I had friends,
highly educated, very devoted to their baby, and very far from family -- who were virtually alone with their baby the first weeks of his life.  I saw the baby
when he was about two days old, still in the hospital.  Then I saw him at ten
days -- his skin looked like a suit of clothes he had lost so much weight, but
his parents were totally unaware.  Fortunately the situation was corrected almost immediately, and he grew up to get scholarships to Stanford -- but these babies aren't always so lucky.

Solutions?  Longer follow-up on BF babies after they leave the hospital, or
shorter time to first well-baby check?  Support groups and prenatal education go along way, the education we do in the hospital helps (but parents are there
such a short time, they can't absorb half of what we're saying).  All the handbooks and "problems to look for" handouts help.  But babies still seem to be slipping through. Does anybody know what the statistics are on these
kiddo's?  Are they very few, or significant numbers?

Thanks,  Chanita