all ye women with slow-gaining babies... come and sympathise with Aitch here please...

[Aitch]

oh bloomin' heck. she's only put on an ounce and a half in 6 days.

Aitch, the best thing I ever did was to tell my HV that I wasn't happy with her standard of care and would not be seeing her again. Put her immediately on the defensive and was like a huge burden off my shoulders.

It's only useful to have their input if you actually believe they have something to offer that you can't provide yourself.

Does she?

LaTrucha, I have often heard from mothers who have had the bejabers scared out of them about weight - and the translation into imperial has turned out to be wrong.

I think it's woeful.

I would have thought, seeing as they must have to write weights in metric every day, that they would take a moment to learn it, just so they wouldn't have to use a conversion table 20 times a day.

I agree, LaTrucha, and anyway, WHAT ON EARTH IS SO DIFFCULT ABOUT METRIC WEIGHTS???

Sorry, shouting, but what IS their problem? You put the baby on the scale, it tells you so many grams, you plot that on the chart. If you need to convert to kg, you divide by 1000 which does not require great feats of mental arithmetic. Even I can divide by 1000 and I'm hopeless at arithmetic and can't reliably add 1 + 1 to get 3 6 1.5 whatever it is.

I would actually worry about this inability, because if a health professional can't manage to grasp metric weight after what? 40 years? of decimalisation, you would wonder a bit about what other ideas they can't grasp in a hurry.

Aitch, you're on a tightrope atm, carrying DD2, with this HV and paed popping up to shout surprisingly and randomly in either ear.

But as time goes on, the tightrope is widening out into a balance beam and you'll soon be walking along a low wall, which you can then hop off and sink your bare feet into warm, soft, daisy-strewn grass.

You need well-informed people to help you place your feet at this stage. The HV certainly doesn't sound like someone who is much cop at supporting tightrope-walking, whereas you know from experience we are expert clowns. You'll be holding an umbrella and riding a unicycle soon, promise.

lololol

gotta go, my car just collapsed.

Collapsed? In a heap?

Aitch, sounds like you are doing fab. It's difficult when you have folk in RL who are supposed to know what they are doing telling you do things that go against your better judgement.

Stick with what is working and keep coming back here for common sense, support, hugs etc.

will do veev.

sorry habs, a lame clowning gag. car intact, in fact.

celestialteapot

< sticks big red nose on and attaches squirty flower thing to lapel >

Sorry about the car, aitch, hope it Gets Well Soon.

God, I'm slow tonight. Bah humbug. Anyway - I've been looking for you here.

oh phew about the car, me being v. slow on the uptake there!

How is dd2 and how are you?

at car gag 'backfiring' arf arf

dd2 ravenous, me tired,

... and smiling I hope!

I must go, am taking the dds out in a probably doomed attempt to get them tired and docile, and you should be sleeping.

How goes it today, Aitch?

well, i'm either starving her and she's getting knackered or she's getting better/faster at bfing. i thought it was a bad night last night (well, it was in the sense that she seemed not to latch on well) but she slept fine and has fed well today.

so. i'm interested in hindmilk.

i understand that it's not a one or other thing and i do get tiktok's rather marvellous hot tap explanation... but i have a question.

lets say i'm switch feeding, largely to keep dd's interest up. when i switch back to a formerly 'hot' tit, is it cold again or lukewarm. iykwim?

Sounds like she's getting better to me - let's hope so. Not sure about the switch feeding as I never thought about hindmilk with my two. DD1 fed for hours and DD2 only ever fed for 10 mins and both were fine!

Ahem....bag of clothes sitting here looking cute!!! rachel underscore summerscales at yahoo dot com

Aitch, I think I pinched the hot tap analogy from elsewhere...it's not bad, but it ain't perfect.

The best way (I think - or at least another way) is to get away from the idea of breastmilk supply being linear....that is, it is not like a long pipe, the beginning of which has 'foremilk' and the end of which has 'hindmilk'. It is much more dynamic than that.

Relatively full breasts will have milk with a higher proportion of water in it. It becomes creamier as milk is removed, not because the baby is battling through to the other end of the pipe, but because the more watery components of breastmilk emerge more readily, as the creamier parts stick to the ducts, coming away a bit later. If the breast is relatively empty, then the milk is relatively creamier because of this factor.

In most cases it doesnt matter - the baby needs no help to engineer his components, as he does it for himself, spurred by his appetite which mirrors his nutritional needs.

The key to weight gain and thriving is milk volume, far more than proportions of cream and water.

Switch feeding boosts the baby's intake and the supply. It is a good thing for slow growing babies to do this. It does not really matter what the cream/water ratio is - it's probably a way of getting more cream into the baby, as the breasts never get a chance to 'overfill' , but it's not really important.

HTH!

Am going away on holiday today but just popped in to see how you are faring.

I agree with Tikok about the hind milk - I think women getawful bogged down about it.

Your little DD will manage to get what she needs just fine. Don't panic as she starts to dicate the type and pace of feeds - she will get more expert the older she gets. Sometimes she will feed frequently - other times she may sleep for a longer period that you think she should. Babies do not always feed well when woken at prescriptive times but then you panic when they have too long inbetween feeds.

Sounds as though you are getting there. Don't forget the improtance of skin to skin contact in encouraging babies to feed.

Good luck - will check in for an update in a fortnight x

mears! it's freezing here now. i'm in my Winter Jumper until May from now on. poor dd will have to burrow in...

thanks ladies, will stop thinking about hindmilk now. it's just every hcp is obsessed with it. and sorry, will email you laundryhater... have totally, gratefully meant to.

Oh Aitch, can I join your club please?

DS2 born 4 weeks ago today with a birthweight of 9lbs 11oz.

Fell to 9lbs 1oz and didn't gain any weight for 3 weeks, he just sayed static.

Spoke to lovely bfc (my sis!) and started switch feeding and expressing after a feed to give as a top up. We went down the expressing route to see if we could get an idea of what my supply was like (very unscientific, but I was expressing 2oz after a feed so we could eliminate low milk supply as a reason for lack of weight gain.)

After 3 days of giving about 2-4ozs of ebm top-ups per day, he put on 3oz. So, we could conclude that supply wasn't a problem, but that ds2 was just feeding enough to sustain himself, but not put on weight.

We then decided to not give any top-ups until the next weigh-in (in 5 days) to see if the little monkey could do it himself. Well, yesterday he was weighed and he put on 5oz in 5 days without any ebm top-ups. Woohoo!

I was very lucky that I had a great IMW and sister who weren't quick to ring the alarm bells. Also as I am under my IMW's care for 28 days I didn't have any well meaning HV's sticking ther oar in.

DS2 is still 2oz away from his birthweight, but I now feel confidant that my milk supply is fine and that ds will do it all in his own time. I have also noticed that he now feeds for longer and has a stronger draw on my boob, and that has only really come with time.

Sorry, that post was a bit me me me, but I wanted you to know that you are not alone. I think because ds was a big birthweight people expect him to be a feeding animal and be about 15lbs by now , but the opposite is true.

We will get there ............. when our lo's are ready to get there

They really are obsessed with it aren't they? I remember being 6 days post-CS fat and naked in bed when the crazy old community midwife I'd never seen before and her glamourous young student came to patronise me check my stitches and went into this elaborate hindmilk claptrap about the baby getting a drink, and then steak and chips, followed by pudding. She did show me how to feed lying down, but this steak and chips business, really!

xx

mmmm, steak and chips.

join away, iliketo, it's a ridiculously large club it turns out. in fact, one of the things that's keeping me going is the fact that even on formula top-ups from day 12 dd1 didn't put on her birth weight until she was five weeks old... and is FINE. congratulations on your brilliant perseverance and your lovely boy.

You're doing so super-ly, Aitch