I can't describe how profoundly sad it makes me to see competent health
professionals bantering about sacrificing infant lives for the sake of
breastfeeding.  Infants are so precious that they deserve our very best
human and scientific efforts.  First of all, it is inexcusable for
anyone's scales not to be calibrated.  Burn anyone at the stake who does
not care enough to carry out good enough science to calibrate their
scales (spoken as a life-long medical technologist)  Secondly, is it so
difficult to see that there are cases when weight is a perfectly
legitimate piece of medical data (although not the only one?)  I have
certainly encountered infants in my ten years of professional lc
practice where infants, especially neurologically "funky" infants have
done a remarkable job of simulating good milk transfer, when there was
none.  I think that my clinical skills are pretty sharp, and now I get a
feel for these babies, but I have been convincingly fooled in the past,
when suck and swallow seem more than adequate.

    Let's please be professionals and not denegrate each other.  We only
serve to hurt those that we seek to help, the little ones.
I realize this is not an extraordinarily organized tome, being dashed
off from the heart, but I would call on each of you to respect each
other professionally, and personally.  Those of us who care enough to
spend eons reading this stuff, and responding when appropriate, deserve
the respect of our fellow health professionals.  Again, I am deeply
saddened by the ugly tone I hear.  I have found over many years, and
many changes that respect, education  and communication are more
powerful than anything other change agents.  Pretty sappy stuff, but
let's keep the greater good in mind!

IMHO
Denise Sweeney
Mobile, AL, where it is finally cool enough to wear a sweater