International Baby Lost Mother's Day 2024 is on Saturday, May 4, 2024: my breastfed baby is losing weight, Dr. wants me to give her formula. HELP?

Saturday, May 4, 2024 is International Baby Lost Mother's Day 2024. "Forever in My Heart" - Sturdy Silicone Wristband‎ Helps Remember Loved One

5 oz is one bottle of milk. If you feed her and she drinks 5 oz she will weigh 5oz more (this is often how they measure milk intake in preemies). Also scales are not that accurate. You can weigh a baby 3 times in a row and get different results. Particularly on the scales commonly found in doctors offices -one mom I know what was having problems with her baby's weight gain they weighed the baby three times in one visit and there was a difference of 10 oz between the lowest and highest weight.

Your doctor is NOT breastfeeding friendly, if he were the first thing he would have done is referred you to a lactation consultant and had you keep a diaper diary for a week and come back for another weight check in a week. As long as the baby is not dehydrated (which is easy to check) there is no reason that this can not wait a week or two while other options besides bottle feeding are tried.

You need to do three things IMMEDIATELY:

1) Get to a lactation consultant.

2) Keep a diaper diary. A "wet" diaper is only 3tbsp so put that in a diaper and see how little that is. A poopy diaper is a poop the size of a quarter. Consider putting a paper towel in the diaper if you have trouble telling when the baby has peed. Disposables can hold a lot before they even seen wet.

3) Feed MORE often (or at least *offer* the breast, of course you can not actually make a baby feed.) Offer the breast at least once an hour.

La Leche League is free, and often public health has lactation nurses as well, or your insurance may cover it. Or if you live in Canada you should have access to a walk-in lactation clinic in most locations. A lactation consultant will assess your babies latch, and give you a diaper diary.

La Leche League -International: (keep clicking you will get to a phone number in your area) or USA only: 1-877-4-LALECHE

If you do need to supplement you should use breastmilk and it shouldn't be in a bottle. A lactation consultant can show you how to cup feed or syringe feed the baby. They may also be able to give you a supplemental nursing system (they can be pretty spendy. Often it is just as easy to hand express milk as to pump it so have the lactation consultant show you how to do that (if you don't know). ALL moms should know how to hand express well, because some day you will be somewhere either without the baby or with a baby that won't nurse because they are distracted and you will want to be able to express some milk -trust me.

Normal Growth of Breastfed Babies

Here is a sample diaper diary:

Human children are designed (whether you believe by millions of years of evolution, or by God, it doesn't matter) -- to nurse *very* frequently, based on the composition of the milk of the species, the fact that all higher primates (Primates are the zoological Order to which humans belong, higher primates include monkeys and apes) keep their offspring in the mother's arms or on her back for several years, the size of the young child's stomach, the rapidity with which breast milk is digested, the need for an almost constant source of nutrients to grow that huge brain (in humans, especially), and so on. By very frequently, I mean 3-4 times per hour, for a few minutes each time. The way in which some young infants are fed in our culture -- trying to get them to shift to a 3-4 hour schedule, with feedings of 15-20 minutes at a time, goes against our basic physiology. But humans are very adaptable, and some mothers will be able to make sufficient milk with this very infrequent stimulation and draining of the breasts, and some children will be able to adapt to large meals spaced far apart. Unfortunately, some mothers don't make enough milk with this little nursing, and some babies can't adjust, and so are fussy, cry a lot, seem to want to nurse "before it is time" and fail to grow and thrive. Of course, usually the mother's body is blamed -- "You can't make enough milk" -- rather than the culturally-imposed expectation that feeding every 3-4 hours should be sufficient, and the mother begins supplementing with formula, which leads to a steady spiral downward to complete weaning from the breast.

Should abortion be illegal accept when the mother's health is in danger?

I have thought about this quite a bit over the years. The wide spread of opinions is incredible, matched only by the passion of the activists on all sides. This is an issue that few people are even able to have a civilized discussion about. Complicating it further is that there are few that hold a black-and-white few of the issue. The majority of people in the US see abortion as a giant grey area with varying degrees of abortion considered acceptable. Very few people hold the position of unlimited abortion access or no abortion under any circumstances. Below is the process I went through to come up with my position on the matter.

First, I asked myself the question at what point does a human being obtain "personhood" and as such gain all the legal and moral protections that status entitles them to? There are some who say that the point of personhood is 28 days AFTER birth, at which point you still should be allowed to abort. In fact, there is a professor of ethics at Princeton University that actively advocates this position. This is the position that spurred “Born Alive” legislation that says if a woman has an abortion and the baby survives, that doctors cannot withhold care and let the baby die on the operating table. Others say up to the point of birth. These folks would hold that partial birth abortion is a reasonable procedure. Or perhaps just before while the mother is in labor. Or 6 months of gestation or 3 months or three weeks. I wrestled with this for a long time.

Then I looked at the issue a different way. Does human life have an imputed value or an intrinsic one? If we say that it is imputed, meaning the value is derived from something else, some outside criteria, then any one of the above positions would be equally valid. We as a society would decide what criteria to select. My problem with this is what criteria do you use? On what basis is a baby at 6 weeks more valuable than a baby at 5 weeks? Is a baby that has not yet developed a heart still a baby? This hit really hard on my wife and I when we lost one of our children. Lynne had a miscarriage a few years ago. When people with strong pro-choice sentiments gave us their condolences, they referred to the fetus as a child, even though she (we named her Grace, even though we do not know for sure if she was a she or a he. It made it easier to explain to the children what happened and easier for Lynne and I to grieve our loss) was at the same gestational point, 9 weeks, that they believed abortion was merely removing some unwanted tissue of the mother. So, the criteria used is whether or not a child is wanted. If that is so, then why?

By similar logic, if the value of human life is imputed, it can also be taken away, depending on what some person or group of persons believe that life is worth. So if you happen to be mentally retarded or black or Jewish, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to be killed off for the good of the community if they believe it. I have a friend who is paralyzed from the neck down. There are some in the world who would look at her and say that she has no quality of life or that the money and effort to support her would be better used on others. They would have her die due to her handicap. But knowing her the way I do I find the notion that she is without a quality of life to be ridiculous on its face. She is a writer, a painter, a social worker, and heads up an international charity. I’d call that a pretty good quality of life. So would her husband who married her years after her accident put her in the wheelchair. Thus, the imputed value logic is shown to me to be completely arbitrary. Following any of the “prior to this point it is not human but at this one on it is” positions is likewise arbitrary and does not answer the question of personhood.

But consider the proposition that human life has an intrinsic value. That it is valuable simply because it is human life and no other reason. No measure or quantification of the value of it, it is and that is enough. It is sort of like gold. Gold is valuable because it is gold, not because we as a society stood up one day and said, “we are going to make gold valuable”. Gold has an intrinsic value as opposed to an imputed value, such as paper currency. Paper currency is worthless in and of itself. It has value only because we say it has a certain value.

This position then would support a clear line between human life and not human life. With this position, you are a human at the point that you have a unique genetic code. In other words, at inception. Prior to inception, there was no “you”. The male and female reproductive components in and of themselves are not a unique genetic code, but merely parts of the donors. It is only when they combine to create new life do “you” begin to be a person.

The notion of intrinsic value also carries forward throughout life. My mother-in-law was on dialysis for several months before diabetes finally took her life. There are many who would have said that she should just die and not burden the rest of us. If those persons held the position that human life has imputed value, I can understand. I however, believe that human life is intrinsically valuable and worth preserving and protecting for as long as possible. Thus, we should protect life at the beginning and at the end and at all points in between.

So, we come full circle back to the question of abortion. Should it be outlawed? My answer, since I believe in the intrinsic value of human life, is that for the most part it should. Why only “for the most part”? Because there are times when you have to weigh the life of two humans and pick one to live and one to die. My sister-in-law faced such a problem once. She got pregnant from her husband and it turned out to be a tubal pregnancy. Had the child been allowed to grow inside of her, it would have killed her before the baby would have been able to survive on its own. Thus, in weighing these two lives, one would have to conclude that the baby would have to die in order to save the mother’s life. What about cases of rape or incest? I have 5 daughters (yes, that was no typo) and the thought of one of them being raped is always lurking in the back of my mind. If one of them should get pregnant as a result, the hard decision would be to let that child live. Pregnancy is not the extremely dangerous event of the past. Rarely do people die from giving birth. Many more die as a result of complications after an abortion. But the bottom line is that the child is innocent of any crime, so why punish it? I’m not saying it is an easy choice and I can certainly sympathize with those who have had to make it. Perhaps they even made the wrong choice. But, God is a loving and forgiving God, who can even forgive the taking of a human life. Which is what abortion is.

Would like to start breastfeeding again (stopped 2 months ago). any tips?

Basically, it would involve a lot of either nursing or pumping. Will your baby take the breast well? If so, then I would start nursing as often as possible, and make sure all supplements are giving at the breast - all of baby's sucking needs should be met at the breast, if possible, via lactation aid, or nursing supplementer: Basically, it's a tube that you tape to your breast, and when the baby nurses at the breast, they also get a supplement from a bottle or bag connected to the tube. This gives your breasts stimulation to produce milk, while simultaneously giving the baby a supplement - be it formula or breastmilk.

If your baby won't take the breast at all, you might consider meeting with an international board certified lactation consultant to work on any latch issues that your baby might have. You should be able to contact one at your local hospital. They should be able to help you get your baby back to the breast. Your supply will build up much faster and better with your baby nursing as opposed to a pump. Pumping just doesn't stimulate your breasts to produce milk as well as a nursing baby does, so your supply will be much better off you can get your baby back to the breast. Meanwhile, you can check out this link on getting your baby back to the breast:

You'll probably need to do some pumping, too, to get your supply going - even if your baby is nursing well. If you don't have a good, double electric, hospital grade pump, you might want to rent one from your local hospital. You can call and ask for their lactation department. Some insurance will cover a pump rental, so if you have insurance, you might want to look into that.

You want aim for at least 10-12 feedings in a day, until you get your milk flowing really well. Once your supply is built up, you can simply nurse on baby's demand, if your baby will take the breast.

If you're unable to get your baby back to the breast, you can still bring in your supply by pumping. You'll still need to get a good pump and pump often - probably about every 2 hours during the day, and you might want to wake once in the night to pump as well. You'll want to simulate a typical baby's eating pattern. Of course, keep in mind that the best way to build a good supply is to get your baby to nurse, so you might have to pump extra to keep that supply going.

Some women who pump exclusively need a little extra help keeping a good supply, since pumps aren't quite as good as a baby's latch. Supplements and medications that help milk production are called galactagogues. There are herbal remedies, prescription drugs, teas, and even some foods that can help build supply: fenugreek, blessed thistle, Mother's Milk tea, More Milk tincture, steel cut oatmeal, and prescription domperidone can all help boost milk supply and pumping output. You can read more about these and other galactagogues here: Be sure to look through the alphabetized list linked at the bottom.

Here's some links on exclusive pumping:

Maintaining a supply when baby isn't nursing:

Exclusive pumping tips:

More Exclusive pumping tips:

Pumping tips from a mom who EPd:

Here's some info on relactation (getting the milk flowing again after you've stopped breastfeeding):