weight

Oh crikey -- ignore the MIL!

Hope you got your nap :)

dude.. my MIL and FIL are french and they are also convinced that any crying is indicative of some deep-seated problem. they swear up and down that when my wife was a baby she "never cried". wtf is wrong with people?? babies cry! that's one of the main things they do!!!

People forget. In fact we're probably programmed to suppress the memories, for our own sanity.

Tracer Hand truth-bombing.

baby is lazy and prefers the bottle, breast feeds drop probably unwittingly and supply dwindles at the same time as demand increases as baby gets older

Problem is that people forget that there's a time frame: You have to wait a couple of weeks and only BF exclusively to avoid this problem. But you also have to introduce it before a certain time because they'll refuse the bottle.

Goodness, the emotion that the BF/Formula debate creates!

Hah. Sorry if I seemed to rag on you both. I really don't want to but I know from (personal) experience how emotional it is. With Elisabeth I had the experience of breastfeeding so quickly settled in it, but with Ophelia I was in such turmoil as it was extremely painful (popping painkillers like mad). I felt sooooo guilty even thinking of supplementing. I never did though. I'm a martyr as my husband would say. haha It was so paiful, even my clothes/bra hurt my nipples. :-((((

From a personal level I too know how difficult it can be. Hell I ended up in A&E when Aidan was about 6 weeks with an abscess in my left boob after a really bad case of mastitis. The only reason I didn't need surgery was because it was right at the surface of the skin and was easily drained.

I think that's why I've gotten so keyed up about it - if I'd had the support I'd needed I'd have known that there was a serious problem with his latch on that side and I'd have had help sorting it out. Instead I was told that pain wasn't unusual and I was feeling so crap and in pain from the latch that I failed to notice that I'd got mastitis! It's all about managing expectations and having the support available.

we took the baby in for her six-month checkup and she had only gained one pound since her four-month appointment. moved from the 25th percentile for weight to the 10th percentile. mostly i'm not too worried because she's energetic and happy and is doing good on all the developmental milestones. but it's hard not to worry at all. the doc said we should go ahead and start supplementing nursing with solid foods (which we had been talking about anyways) and see if that helps her bulk up some more by eight months.

Damn these wretched weigh-ins for making people fret. I'm sure she is absolutely fine. Have fun with weaning though :)

No food is as calorific as breastmilk, so she's not going to fatten up on solids. It's hard not to worry when it seems to be going against medical 'advice' but if you weren't worried before the checkup then I'd take it all with a pinch of salt. For a start, what weight chart was he/she using? weight increase is very different for breastfed infants than it is for formula fed ones, it's very normal for them to slow down around the 6 month mark. http://www.kellymom.com/babyconcerns/growth/growthcharts.html

Sorry, rant over! Go ahead and start solids, it's fun! But don't be surprised if it doesn't pile the weight on!

yeah, I guess the idea is we're supplementing with solids, not weaning, so she's still getting about the same amount of breastmilk, plus a small amount of solids. that chart has her at mean -2.5, so I don't know what percentile that is, but I'll bring that up with the pediatrician next time we meet. like I said, I'm not that worried, as she seems good physically and developmentally

ahhh, in the uk we refer to the introduction of solids as weaning, as it's a gradual transition. As soon as you introduce solids the milk intake decreases. In the US, as you know, weaning is intentionally withdrawing milk.

ah

I didn't know that! Sorry for confusion.

Do US babies get a lot more frequent weighing, medical check-ups etc? Over here you don't see a paed unless your kid is ill, took me months to get to see one for Howie's eczema.

I don't know what the normal is, I think we had one-month, two-month, four-month, and six-month checkups. Next one was supposed to be nine months, but we're going in for a weigh-in at eight months to see if she's moving up at all.

Crikey. Here you get an eight-week check-up but after that it's completely voluntary, I went loads with Howie as I didn't know better but hardly bothered with Archie.

"I don't know what the normal is, I think we had one-month, two-month, four-month, and six-month checkups."

It's two weeks, two month, four month, six month here for my medical group.