I am fascinated reading (and learning from) all the various impressions on
the value and/or place (or not) of technology, specifically digital scales,
as part of a thorough assessment of a feeding, and the use of this "snapshot
in time" as a symbol of the 24 hour feeding situation. The different
cultural and basic disciplinary slants are particularly fascinating and
instructive. Or as an old U.S. saying goes "There is more than one way to
skin a cat!"


As yet, I have not seen anyone address the fact that volume taken in does
not necessarily translate to calories taken in when the fluid is breastmilk.
As I'm fond of assuring my moms who are afraid to pump even a little bit of
milk too close to the time their babies might wake up, "neither a pump nor a
baby can ever totally empty a breast, and the thicker, slower-flowing milk
that is still left behind is always much creamier, which means double the
calories in every mouthful! And milk production speeds up for a while each
time your breast is softened by either feeding or pumping."


Given the mechanization and homogenization of the artificial infant fluids,
no doubt our (U.S.) culture is used to assuming that every gram on the scale
indicates a cc. with the exact same calorie count. Even though the metric
system first used the weight of water per cubic cc. as the basis for a gram
weight (correct me, please, if I am wrong. This is 6 decade old high school
science memories in a culture still pretty much stuck on ounces, where the
same word "ounce" is used in weight and volume, but the fluid ounce and
averdupois ounce are not the least bit similar). As I understand it, the
weight of milk is close enough to the weight of water that it doesn't make
that much actual difference in weight/volume measurements. However, breast
milk is not at all homogenized, as so brilliantly put to use in Meier's
research on skimming off hindmilk of one bottle of EBM to add to another
bottle of So the total calorie count can certainly differ between feedings,
even if the scale were to say the exact same thing if careful pre- and
post-feed weights were taken at any two different feedings!

Just thought I'd toss that into the debate! Now I'd better soon go no mail
and start studying my new books in preparation for my third exam, coming up
before I know it!

Jean
*******
K. Jean Cotterman RNC, IBCLC
Dayton OH USA

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