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- My milk didn’t come in.
- My baby was never satisfied.
- He nursed all the time.
- I couldn’t pump anything out.
- My baby wasn’t gaining enough weight.
- I stopped producing milk.
- My baby didn’t want to nurse anymore.
“My baby wasn’t gaining enough weight.”
Infant Weight Gain with Breastfeeding
Many breastfeeding mothers are told they have problems with infant weight gain. It seems as if a mother has to have permission from doctors in order to have a healthy baby. Each baby is an individual and will gain weight according to his genetics. Providing that the infant does not have some underlying medical issue (which of course should be ruled out) and is exclusively breastfed, the infant will gain weight as he needs to, which may be at a faster or slower pace than other babies.
Doctors receive most of their infant nutrition ‘education’ from formula companies, which obviously base their expectations on formula-fed infants. The growth charts that doctors use are based on growth statistics for formula-fed infants. Breastfed infants do not gain weight at the same pace as formula-fed infants do. They typically gain it much more quickly in the first four months, and then at four to six months the rate quickly slows. This abrupt change in the rate of weight gain can make many doctors very concerned when they see such a difference on the baby’s chart. From six months onward breastfed infants will gain weight typically at a slower pace than formula-fed infants.
An infant truly can have weight gain issues however. If the infant is healthy poor weight gain is usually attributed to a poor latch. If the baby is not latched deeply onto the breast, but is sucking mostly on the nipple, he will not be able to milk the breast properly and draw out the milk. Some hands-on help by an IBCLC or some good research can help the mother learn how to properly latch her baby on. This often rectifies the situation quickly and the baby can begin to meet its caloric needs sufficiently.
