I do a lot of test weights as Jan Barger described: to confirm what the
mother and I already suspect and help us figure out just where we are.
Mothers seem almost relieved to see that, by golly, their baby *isn't*
feeding well, just as they thought. And I'm usually relieved too, because
they generally do better than I thought they did. For an occasional baby
who has come back and come back and come back, the ever increasing "inputs"
have become part of a triumphal process the mom and I go through as we work
through the problems.
But I've done the reverse too. I wrote 2 months ago about a type 1 diabetic
mother whose milk supply just wasn't quite adequate for her little 5 pound
10 oz (2.5 k) baby. Right or wrong, we pinned it on her excessive blood
loss at delivery and have hoped for a gradual rebound. Keeping her baby
exclusively breastmilk fed has been very important to her, and getting her
milk supply up to his needs will say clearly to her something she really
wants to feel - that her body can do something normal and well. So we've
had our fingers crossed, we've watched his weight carefully, and she delayed
supplements as long as she could.
He limped along, paralleling his "birthweight curve" but from a point about
8 oz below it, never regaining the ground he lost initially, and his weight
gain finally wheezed to a halt at about a month. She began supplementing
with 6 oz per day of a friend's milk, and his weight began to catch up. But
the friend's supply of extra milk diminished, and she's been using only 4 oz
per day for the past week. The mom has had two previous episodes of
feeling fuller, feeling more confident, having more leaking, hearing more
gulping, and she just recently had another such episode, as if her supply is
racheting itself upward a notch at a time.
The gain this past week, on reduced supplement? Over an ounce a day, to
just shy of 9 lb. For the first time, he's actually *over* his birthweight
projection. She's delighted, but her delight was tempered by the few test
weights she's done at home with a digital scale. They've never shown a 2 oz
intake. "I think now we just start relying on the magic of the whole
thing," I told her. "The bottom line is he's gaining better than ever on
less supplement than before. Who cares exactly how he's doing it?"
For me, test weights have a very important place. But so has magic.
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC Ithaca, NY
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