>The growth charts can be of real value with infants and children that are
failure to thrive. The weight amount is not as important as following the
curve..... I think on
normal, healthy babies the information is not as critical as with babies
that
really are failing to thrive.<

Roni, yes, plotting weights with every baby can be of use in a general way
as one diagnostic 'test' for identifying a pool of babies who might deserve
further investigation -- and I believe that this is the theory of how weight
charts are supposed to be used here in the UK.

However, an important point is that every baby is weighed very regularly
here -- I see
some who are weighed every week at their local clinic, and many more who are
weighed every fortnight.  These are babies for whom there is no reason to
weigh this often -- that is, they have not been identified in any way as
being in any danger of ftt or anything.  This is just the usual practice.
Then, every little
fluctuation (and the theory of use of weight charts -- which were developed
to use on a whole population, not on individual babies, anyway -- is that
you should monitor babies who cross [up or down] two channels, not just
deviate from 'their line'.  And many babies *will* deviate from their curve,
or 'revert to the mean' as the statisticians who study the whole
populations term it (see various papers by Tim Cole on Medline) -- every
little fluctuation assumes a 'meaning' to the mother -- usually that she has
to stuff something more down her baby's neck, and if breastmilk don't whack
on the calories, it will be non-human milk or early solids.

Of the babies who fall several centile channels down the charts, not all, or
even a majority, will be failing to thrive.  And of those that are, there
will not always be a reason identified and a 'treatment' that works.  For
example, there is a research paper about the weight trajectories of babies
in the first 12 months who are born to mothers who are identified as being
abused by their partner.  the babies of women who stop being abused have a
different weight trajectory than the babies of women whose abuse continues.
This is a US paper, and, sadly, does not mention how the babies were fed in
this study.  I guess that if these babies were identified as ftt, and
investigated, but no one thought to investigate their mothers' experience of
abuse from their partner, there would be no effective 'treatment'.  The
paper has a case history where this happened.

I don't deny that there are babies who fail to thrive and that there are
ways to screen for this, including weighing, but I have become totally
amazed by the lack of real justification for what is, here in the UK, a very
common regular practice, a ritual which every mother goes through, which is
accepted as benign and harmless.  Aside from anything else I am staggered at
the amount of money our government must be spending on this....at a time
when we don' t have enough midwives to deliver babies safely!

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN, UK

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