Chris Mulford gave a lenthy discussion about recommended amounts of EBM and ABM. I would like to point out with my reply to Ellen Shein's reasonable question I gave what I believe to be an appropriate and factual answer. She specifically asked for amounts relating to newborns. I may have only quoted from only one textbook, if I went to the library I could have quoted very similar figures from several textbooks. I believe lactation consultants, counsellors or other health care professional dealing with mothers and newborn babies need to have a knowledge and an understanding of basic fluid requirments eg. what if the mother is too sick breastfeed or the baby too sick to breastfeed and she needs to express adequate amounts of EMB to meet the baby's caloric requirements. What about the cases of breast refusal that from time to time are posted on the Lactnet--the lactation counsellor or consultant needs to be know the baby's fluid and caloric needs if some other means of giving EBM is temporarily employed? Yes the figures given are ball park figures and there is scope for variation--thats why I added the quote from the text book which supports demand feeding for the healthy bottle fed infants, but then at least we have some basis to judge whether the infant has consumed a reasonable amount for the day. Some babies may consume more, some less and as long as weight gain appropriate and all the other signs such as alertness, output etc (that we look for in a breastfed baby) are OK then there is no need for concern. And as you rightly pointed out Chris as the baby gets older the caloric requirement per unit of weight decreases and this is the reason the breast fed baby's weight begins to level off around 4 months. As regards "the mathemetrical symmetry" of the feeding schedule I quote and whether the author calculated backwards from 150 to 0 on day zero this is not the case or all the other authors of the numerous neonatal textbooks I have read over the last 25 years have also got the formula hopelessly wrong. Newborn babies are born well hydrated and don't need high volumes of fluid over the first couple of days--no mother produces 150mls/kg/day of colostrum over the first couple of days. If the baby is artifically fed (for whatever reason) we all know this is not as well tolerated as breast milk, and the gradual increase enables better tolerance. Dramatically overfeeding formula (particularly) to a day 1 or 2 will almost invariable lead to vomitting. However over the first few days mothers milk production steadily increases so that it approximates the 150 mls/kg.day table that I quoted. Demand fed babies who are alert and sucking well would usually take somewhere within this ball park figure by about the end of the first week. Marian Rigney RN _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp *********************************************** 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