Dear all:

Well, I had a blast from the past with a link that was sent from my prior life in International Nutrition.  It reinforced something that I often say to mothers when their baby's weight is bouncing around a curve.  Weight is an immediate response to a situation and a normal healthy baby can regulate responses that caused the weight to drop or increase.  For instance, a baby that may have a virus and is successfully fighting it off may temporarily have a loss of appetite and drop in weight gain, but frequent feeding and more intensive contact with her mom will help her regulate her appetite as she fends of the virus and regains her appetite. Her weight gain may be low or nil during the virus and be much faster than her average after she fends it off.   As babies get older and further from birth, length becomes a more stable indicator of the growth pattern.  And indeed there are important long term impacts on health from stunting.  

The dissertation results that I never published because of the fear that the results would be misinterpreted were that supplementation with a nutritionally dense uncontaminated supplement in a feeding center increased growth among a population of "mixed" fed 3-6 month old infants and that translated into an increase in the height at two years of age.  No other 3 month interval mattered as much as the period from 3-6 months.  These results actually are completely consistent with exclusive breastfeeding being a better approach because breast milk is the cleanest most nutrient dense food that could be offered to 3-6 month olds.  Since the number of exclusively breastfed infants were negligible in this sample of infants there was no way that I could examine the results that appeared in later studies with a much better experimental design than the data set I used.  Keep in mind that the balance of this population of infants was UNDERNOURISHED probably because of the early introduction of contaminated and low nutrient dense solids.  So this does not translate what would happen among a population of infants who are already receiving adequate calories and nutrients.  It does mean that we should, however, be preventing patterns of behavior that disrupt an infants normal physiologic feeding patterns between three and six months of age -- so that those infants are gaining appropriately and not experiencing major disruptions to their growth due to iatrogenically induced bizarre feeding patterns that can be a product of our modern societies.


This link also has two other articles of interest. One on skin to skin contact and another on preventing early feeding difficulties.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ao5u9cdab&v=001mgvimUtTidO7tGaj2LDYxbHr8ULtGE9wTtkg22Ovb2QJW5ARPwddUtXONQsxrMegeu__CfbzIgTN48-UiuAIq3EFzIGBj42-DJ0sf5AAckE%3D


Best regards
Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome