Deborah, Welcome to our wonderful forum and I bet you passed the exam! You said "I guess I'm just really confused as to why supplementation was recommended instead of close observation and follow up with not even a 10% weight loss in a full term infant. And if supplementation was deemed medically necessary, why this mom was told that a supplementation system at breast would have been "too much hassle" for her..." Deborah, you're not confused, but some others in the healthcare team sound like they are. Several points I will make. 1. The baby may or may not have needed to be supplemented, not necessarily due to the wt loss, but whether the mom had her own milk to provide or not. 2. Supplementing at the breast, if possible, is usually best for the baby to learn bf, however discuss the options with mom (benefits and risks of each method, or adv. and disadv.) and she decides in consultation with you. 3. Lots of discussion among lactation people and in our archives re wt loss, looking only at the numbers, what these numbers mean etc. My understanding is some schools of thought recommend intervening (whatever that may be) at a 7% wt loss. Most babies that are in fact doing very well with bf and kept close to mom at all times, and with a mom with normal bf progression, IMO, drop wt only slightly and are gaining by 4th or 5th day, and by 2 wks are generally well over birhtweight. If you've been lurking long you probably have read very thoughtful comments by Dr. Jack, Barbara Wilson-Clay and others on this. 4. In my experience, many times healhtcare workers recommend formula supplements when in fact the mother has the milk to give even if the baby cannot effectively get it out of her w/o help, and these same hcps forget to work on mom's supply if in fact formula is (temporarily) needed. I could go on, but you get the point. BTW, you are going to be asking yourself these same questions that you asked above, and more, for a long time to come unfortunately, if you stay in the business of bf. Keep the faith. Laurie Wheeler, RN, MN, IBCLC Violet Louisiana, s.e. USA _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html