I'm not sure I'll be of any help, but I'd like to offer a different view.  I
work with the same population of infants as a nursery RN.  In my experience,
infants almost NEVER tolerate these volumes.  I feel like I am constantly
trying to fight the system on this.  In fact, I just had an infant the other
night (barely 3 days old) who was worked up to his full feeding of 50ml
every three hours!!  And of course he would not take that much, so they put
a gavage tube in.  And I noticed (and charted very carefully) that as soon
as the volume reached about 30-35ml, he would begin to cry, scrunch up his
belly, belch repeatedly and throw up.  And for this baby, it far exceeded
10ml/kg.  I see this all the time - I do NOT see infants tolerating high
volumes at such a young age.  My charge nurse agreed with me.  We said we
felt like it was some sort of infant torture... "Let's forcefully (and
against your will) pump your belly full of fluids until it's so
uncomfortable that you throw it up."  Our hands are tied.  If the infant
won't take it, they make us put a feeding tube in.  They don't seem to care
that the infant throws up so long as we can document that we gave the full
amount.

I look forward to hearing other responses.

Christina Harris, RN
Seattle, WA

On 3/13/07, Price Pamela B <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Fellow lactnetters, Today, during a staff education class for
> breastfeeding, several of the nursery staff had issue with the amount of
> volume a newborn stomach can take. (I used the belly balls for visual
> aide). We (the LCs) are trying to use the evidence to promote change in
> practice for feeding or supplementing with large volumes over 15ml in
> the first 24-48 hours.
>

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