Dear Rachel and others;

You just confirmed what I have observed myself.  I've been trying to dose one of our pet 
mice who is recovering from an ear abcess with a syringe.  The dose is 0.02 ml.  Fluid 
tension is a huge problem because the amounts are so small.  The drips on the edges of 
the syringe probably contain more medication than the drops in the syringe.  I want a 
micropipette to deal with this problem!  But I've been looking at those little black lines 
and thinking, they really are not that precisely lined up.  I think with the quantities I've 
been dealing with, I could be up to 100% off in my doses at times.

I have measured a huge amount of inaccuracy in the little lines on bottles.  Those plastic 
little bumps or colored lines are not precision tooled.  I've seen parents overestimate 
what their baby took by about 1-1/2 ounces.  I've seen huge differences between the lines 
on bottles when pouring from one type to another (plus the remainder that you can never 
get out).

We all know that babies feed differently on a bottle than on the breast.  I have seen it go 
both ways --- much more and much less than on the breast.  Even without a scale, 
anyone who watches babies feed on a routine basis know this.

We also all know that how women release to the pump differs.  Most women will still 
release more to the pump after the baby has fed, but we all know those moms who 
cannot release to the pump and the baby is well fed and thriving.   

The most damaging thing about the research with plastic bottles is that many 
pediatricians will try to argue that moms must pump and bottle feed to see what the baby 
is getting.  

If for anything else, a scale should be used to prevent forced pumping and bottle feeding 
for a baby that is feeding on the breast.  It helped me to give the endocrinologist (the 
pediatrician never read my report) to diagnose a baby with an aldosterone probem who 
was eating a lot from the breast (over 3 ounces), could not feed well from the bottle (1 
oz with an hour of concentrated work), and losing weight rapidly.  

I'd like to Weissingerize the situation.  Comparing imprecisely tooled bottles to a 
precisely tooled scale is about the same as saying "breastfed babies are abnormally 
healthy, experiencing too few episodes of diarrrhea and respiratory infections compared 
to normal infants who are fed formula from a bottle". 

Instead, the studies actually show that "visual observation of the volume in a bottle is 
imprecise and accurate, up to 30 ml off compared to measurement with a precise 
weighing scale.

Scales are tooled and calibrated to be accurate and precise.  That little number of 0.1 oz 
or 2 grams or 0.5 oz tells you that testing went into the calibration.  Did any researches 
look into the bottle lines?

Best, Susan Burger

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