Well, could it possibly be that the intake and weight gain  *is* adequate
*for these babies* *at this time*  - or am I being too radical here?
But....we don't know how much or how rapidly babies *must* grow in the
early weeks - only how much and how rapidly the vast majority of them grow
when bf is going well - and yes, that is certainly rather more than nil
weight gain. Until we get a database of (say) 100 million exclusively bf
babies we'll never know for sure what the final bounds of 'normal'  are : )

If the babies are healthy (and Jan has had this fully checked out) and
happy (ditto), and on observation feeding okay (ditto again), and  all the
obvious signs of physiological functioning are fine (ditto again and
again)...then maybe these babies are just congenitally slow growers. I
would, though, suggest that the frequency of bf, stated as more than 8 x a
day, could be increased if baby is willing...that's certainly not all that
often for a baby of 2-3 weeks...as we know more frequent feeding increases
the fat content of the milk.

I have come across a couple of babies like this - both belonged to a bfc
colleague, and they  didn't achieve birthweight until 3-4 weeks without
anything being wrong, and with plenty of signs that everything was going
right (apart from that  s...l...o...w weight gain). Mother was a bit
worried, but comforted herself with the fact that her MIL said her husband
(ie babies' dad) was a very slow gainer. They started to gain normally
after this. There were no further problems with these babies' health,
though we lost touch after kids were about four and six  years old,  when
she moved.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK