How to find out if your baby is getting enough breast milk. How can you tell if your baby is full of breast milk? How to tell if your baby is not getting enough breast milk

Breastfeeding poses serious questions for new mothers, one of which is how to determine if the baby is not getting enough to eat. breast milk.

This problem is especially worrying in the first month of a baby’s life and does not lose its relevance until the end of the first half of the year, when liquid and healthy nutrition often remains the only source of energy for the child.

A lot depends on the correctness of the mother’s actions, because sometimes a woman, misreading the signs of malnutrition, transfers the baby to an artificial formula, depriving him of the ideal product and the necessary tactile communication.

According to some mothers, the most telling signs of infant malnutrition are as follows:

• constant crying that is not associated with other possible causes;
• weakness of the child, low activity;
• restless behavior that occurs as soon as the baby approaches the mother's breast.

Despite the general knowledge of these facts, a nursing mother should not take them too seriously. Of course, they really talk about children's problems, but not that the baby is hungry, but that he has problems with the intestines.

If all these symptoms are observed, then the baby probably has colic. In this case, he additionally presses his legs towards his stomach and cries after latching on to the chest.

Another common parental mistake is weighing the baby too often, for example, after every meal. Seeing that the weight gain is small, parents begin to get nervous and eventually decide to supplement with formula feeding.

Symptoms of malnutrition in a newborn often include difficulty falling asleep and restless behavior during sleep.

For example, the baby may feel maternal nervousness, was simply born overly anxious or was a little sick. It is important for a woman to find out accurate information about the “sleepy” standards that are relevant for each month of life and try to put the baby to bed at the appropriate time intervals.

Checking wet diapers

GW experts say there are only two exact method establish that the child is not getting enough breast milk: checking wet diapers and assessing body weight gain over the month.

Another sign of being hungry infant– smacking lips, tongue, sucking a finger, fist or the edge of a diaper.

In addition, since mother's milk is considered both food and drink for the baby, excessively dry skin can also be a sign of malnutrition.

So, you have determined that the baby remains hungry throughout the day, now you need to identify the reasons that interfere with optimal lactation and lead to malnutrition. Since both mother and baby are involved in feeding, the nutrition process needs to be considered from all sides.

The reasons for the lack of milk are often due to the incorrect behavior of the mother (or her environment) during the lactation period:

Another probable reason is too frequent, leading to an overabundance of this product. In general, milk secretion can be anterior or posterior. Foremilk is thinner and contains less fat (“empty”), which is what is produced during frequent pumping.

Hind milk is fatty, which means it is more nutritious and filling. The baby can only get enough of hindmilk, because fatty foods are not digested so quickly and leave a feeling of fullness for a longer period.

The baby may remain hungry if the feeding process is interfered with:

• colic that worsens while eating;
• nasal congestion or damage to the oral cavity;
• incorrect latching of the chest.

The following experiment will help you discover feeding deficiencies: when you give your baby the breast, listen to how he swallows. The normal ratio is two or three suckings interspersed with one sip (in the first minutes of feeding, the baby should do a lot of sucking to increase the flow of milk from the breast). If there are few swallowing movements, the baby will remain hungry.

If a child does not get enough breast milk, he begins to be capricious, irritable, and also grows poorly and lags behind in development. If you discover that your baby does not have enough food in the first month, do not be nervous, as nervousness will only worsen the situation.

By listening to the following advice from breastfeeding experts, you can improve lactation and properly organize your baby’s feeding:

1. Try. During natural feeding, the mammary glands secrete optimal quantity milk in response to the baby's stimulation of the nipples. That is, the child should eat whenever he wants.
2. How to understand that a child is full? A well-fed newborn releases the nipple on its own, which is why it is not recommended to interrupt your meal at will.
3. Make sure you are applying the crumb correctly. Correct position: the mouth is open, the child should grasp both the papilla and the areola, only swallowing can be heard, there are no other sounds.
4. Set up a couple of comfortable feeding positions so you can alternate between them. The correct position is that the back of the child’s head, neck and back are located on a straight line. To prevent the baby from turning his head and reaching for the breast, the nipple should be close to his mouth.
5. Try feeding from one breast at a time so that the baby can suck both the foremilk and the hind milk.
6. Don't be afraid to wake your baby to feed. During the day he should not sleep more than three hours in a row, at night - more than 5-6. Before eating, the baby can be washed with cool water or undressed to activate all processes.
7. Avoid bottles for at least the first month of your child’s life. It is better to give expressed milk using a spoon or pipette. This is necessary so that the baby does not get used to pacifiers.
8. Give yourself a break, while there is such an opportunity - the child is sleeping, or relatives are babysitting him.
9. Review your diet, including more carbohydrate and protein foods. Avoid foods that may affect the flavor of the milk. It is also necessary to drink the required amount of warm liquid.
10. If there are any signs of trouble, be sure to show the baby to a specialist.

To make the feeding process easier, you can purchase a special pillow. This device helps to properly attach the baby to the breast and reduce the load on the mother’s back.

A cozy feeding procedure, a comfortable pillow, and pleasant music will create a comfortable atmosphere for eating and enjoy the procedure itself.

Inexperienced mothers often listen to the advice of girlfriends or simply common myths regarding breastfeeding, and decide for themselves that the child is not getting enough to eat. And this is already fraught with the wrong choice, which can harm the baby.

If it seems to you that your child is not eating well and has not eaten enough for 24 hours, be sure to consult a doctor. He will most accurately determine the likely factors that provoke malnutrition, recommend ways to improve breastfeeding, or suggest choosing the optimal milk formula for supplementary feeding.

The most important thing in such a situation is not to worry unnecessarily, but to maintain a positive attitude, which will certainly be passed on to the baby!

Hello, I am Nadezhda Plotnikova. Having successfully completed her studies at SUSU as a specialized psychologist, she devoted several years to working with children with developmental problems and consulting parents on issues of raising children. I use the experience gained, among other things, in creating articles of a psychological nature. Of course, I in no way claim to be the ultimate truth, but I hope that my articles will help respected readers deal with any difficulties.

Artificial feeding has the only advantage: the mother always knows whether her baby is full or not. At breastfeeding this is more difficult to find out. Doctors and experienced mothers agree that observations of the physiological characteristics and behavior of a newborn make it possible to detect and eliminate problems associated with the baby’s nutrition.

How can you tell if your newborn is full of breast milk?

You can tell that your baby is full by the following signs:

1. The baby refuses the breast and looks happy.
2. Mom's breasts become soft and empty.
3. The baby is sleeping soundly and calmly.
4. The baby easily copes with three-hour breaks between feedings.
5. The daily norm of urination is at least 10–20 times.
6. The stool is mushy, dark or...
7. Proportional development of weight and height.
8. Quite active behavior.

Causes of hunger and malnutrition

Among the common reasons are problems with the mother's milk and improperly organized feeding. However, the issue requires detailed consideration. Causes of malnutrition include:

• Lack of milk . The baby, in dissatisfaction, throws the breast and grabs it again, indicating that the milk has run out and it is necessary to give a second breast.
• Uncomfortable position . If the baby stretches, turns his head, tries to reach the nipple, then it is necessary to change position.
• and bottles . To breastfeed, the baby needs to make an effort, and pacifiers and bottles make sucking easier, so after them the baby may begin to be lazy about sucking the breast.
• Chest pads . While the baby is trying to suckle at the breast, he has to try very hard, because the pads make sucking more difficult, do not allow him to grasp the nipple correctly, and reduce the amount of milk swallowed.
• Ailments . Runny nose, digestive disorders, stomatitis, oral diseases - all this prevents the child from eating due to the discomfort experienced.
• Decreased lactation due to a sudden transition to feeding on a precise schedule. During the first weeks, it is necessary to put the newborn to the breast as needed (once every 3 hours).

Sometimes babies fall asleep while feeding - in this case, the child needs to be woken up if he has not eaten his quota.

Reduced fat content of breast milk, which occurs as a result of expressing a large amount, can also cause hunger, because the nutritional properties in the milk become less and the baby does not have time to get enough.

Knowing the causes of hunger and being attentive to her child, any mother will detect and eliminate the problem in time.

Dehydration in a newborn due to malnutrition

Breast milk is both food and water for babies, so if Severe dehydration occurs due to malnutrition , the following symptoms are observed:

• Rare urination with a pungent odor, dark-colored urine.
• Specific odor from the mouth.
• Dry mouth, stringy salivation.
• Drowsiness and lethargy.
• Flabbiness of the skin and dullness of the eyeballs.

If you notice the above symptoms, give your child a drink of water and immediately consult a doctor.

Causes of lack of milk and ways to increase lactation

To establish the true cause of insufficient milk supply, a comprehensive study of the problem is necessary, but among the common causes are:

• Stress and conflicts in the family.
• Poor nutrition.
• Features of the structure of the nipples.
• A tense state due to lack of rest.
• Cracked nipples.
• Incorrect attachment to the breast.

Before panicking, mom needs to first take care of her positive attitude, improve relationships in the family, come to grips with proper and regular nutrition, and drink as much water as possible.

In addition, walking on fresh air, mother's rest, breast massage, use correct technique attaching a newborn to the breast, feeding not by the clock, but on demand.

Conclusions

Video about how to determine lack of milk

More and more often, mothers after birth want to breastfeed their baby, and this is very pleasing. However, most young mothers have no experience in feeding issues and many questions and difficulties arise. This is greatly facilitated by various “experienced” advisers who consider it their duty to notice to the young mother - “he’s thin”, “your milk is low-fat” and “the neighbor guy over there gained 15 kilos on formula in one year!”

These kinds of remarks involuntarily make a young mother doubt her abilities, or they can lead to completely unreasonable complementary feeding with purees and cereals and supplementary feeding of the baby with formula. The introduction of additional amounts of food negatively affects lactation, leads to overfeeding of the child and the formation excess weight. Such phenomena will not improve the baby’s health. How to avoid overfeeding when supplementary feeding or complementary feeding is really necessary, which is an indicator that the child is not getting enough to eat and what not?

Roots of the problem.
Unfortunately, in our country for many years there was a dominance of artificial nutrition, and there was no support for breastfeeding. Several generations of artificial babies have grown up, whose developmental norms are often very different from those of infants. In addition, children on formula often initially have quite pronounced overfeeding due to the diligence of parents in feeding their children, and the idea is firmly ingrained in the minds of our parents that well-fed child must be very well-fed with pronounced folds and constrictions, gaining more than a kilo every month!

Grandmothers also play a significant role in matters of overfeeding, instructing a young daughter or daughter-in-law: “don’t torture the child, your milk is blue, give him formula!” Under the pressure of such “heavy artillery” the woman gives up. And the grandmother is incredibly happy about the baby’s gain of 100-1500 g, not realizing what harm such overfeeding causes to the toddler’s digestion and metabolism.

Constant hard work of the digestive system, caused by excess food intake, ultimately leads to the formation of pancreatitis, liver problems and a restructuring of the entire metabolism, it begins to deposit fat, subsequently forming obesity. In children with overfeeding, the risk of developing heart disease, as well as early vascular atherosclerosis, increases sharply. Such babies in adulthood more often suffer from hypertension, the hormonal balance of the body and the ability of girls to bear children are disrupted. Do you want such a fate for your baby? How, then, can you decide whether the child has enough nutrition and whether he is hungry?

What are not signs of hunger?
Sometimes situations arise in which mothers worry about whether the baby has enough milk or whether he needs to give it extra food? These situations are different in each case and require detailed explanation in order to eliminate doubts and prevent the introduction excess nutrition. There are several of them:

- My milk began to leak from my breasts, so I decided that there was less of it, the baby didn’t have enough of it.
Very often, mothers think that a sign of a lack of milk is the absence of leakage between feedings from both breasts or during feeding from the second breast. This does not apply to objective signs of lack of milk. It only indicates the fact that the mother’s lactation is entering a fairly stable or mature phase. The body already produces exactly as much milk as is needed for one feeding, and milk is produced during feeding, without excess or waste. This allows you to better maintain the shape of the breast, and also not deplete the reserves of the mother’s body due to milk loss. The breast is a delicate instrument and adapts to its baby.

- I don’t have a feeling of fullness or tides.
This, along with the previous sign, is also not a sign of lack of milk, but an indicator of the transition of lactation to the mature phase. During the period of mature lactation, most of the milk is formed during the process of the baby sucking at the breast, which makes it possible not to overfill the mother’s breasts and not cause her discomfort.

- I can’t express anything at all from my breast after feeding.
This is an argument often made by mothers, but it is not a sign of a lack of milk. First of all, no breast pump or even the most skillful manual expression technique can empty the breast as completely as the baby himself will, so you won’t be able to express much. Secondly, with mature lactation, milk is produced approximately as much as the baby needs, and there is no need for additional pumping. With additional pumping, excessive stimulation of lactation occurs and the formation of hyperlactation occurs with breast fullness and discomfort for the woman and baby.

- The baby constantly screams between main feedings or when he is on the breast.
Typically, this behavior does not indicate a lack of milk; rather, it indicates the beginning of breastfeeding, infrequent feedings, or it is a sign of colic, illness or other discomfort. If the mother always gives breast to the toddler at the first request and is attentive to the baby’s requirements, such situations usually either pass quickly or do not arise at all.

- The baby may hang on my chest for a long time, or he asks for the breast too often.
This is one of the most common reasons for introducing formula and the formation of overfeeding. The mother does not know or does not want to understand that the breast for the child is more than just food and drink. It plays the role of calming, toy, affection and even medicine. In addition, the crumbs' appetite is different times different. Sometimes he wants to have a little snack, sometimes he wants to eat a lot. That is why you should not limit your baby’s sucking and give breastfeeding on demand.

After feeding, many mothers give the baby a bottle of formula and he begins to suck it greedily - and this is the main motivation for the child to fast.
However, such behavior of the child is not a lack of milk at all, but an innate sucking reflex; with the same success, the baby will begin to suck a fist, a diaper or your finger that has fallen into his mouth, this is the satisfaction of the sucking reflex. But, there is a hole in the bottle with the mixture and the mixture will certainly end up in his mouth, it must be swallowed so as not to choke, hence the false feeling of underfeeding. The baby will push the bottle out when there is simply nowhere for the milk mixture to go physically - usually then mothers also complain about excessive regurgitation. After such a massive volume of excess formula, the baby loses his appetite for a long time and does not latch on to the breast - the mother thinks that the milk has run out and curtails the breastfeeding, making sure there is a “lack” of milk.

- He doesn't sleep well at night - he wakes up to eat, which means he's hungry.
This is one of the strongest motivations for the older generation. And with incredible efforts they try to push formula or porridge into the child at night in order to achieve “rest” for the tummy and sleep for the mother. But in fact, night feedings are designed by nature to maintain active and prolonged lactation. After all, the maximum amount of lactation hormones is released at night. In the absence of active sucking of the breast and its emptying, the breast develops an attitude toward curtailing lactation - “since milk is no longer needed at night.”

How to determine whether you are full or not?
In breastfeeding, there are two main indicators that allow you to objectively assess whether the baby is getting enough to eat and whether he needs to be given additional nutrition. This is weight gain and the number of urinations according to the “wet diaper test”.

If the child’s body receives adequate nutrients, he can gain weight in leaps and bounds, 1500g in one month, 600g in another, or evenly 500-800g per month. The lower limit of normal weight gain through global research has been established as 500g per month or 125g per week.

Many doctors who do not have objective knowledge in the field of natural feeding practice “control weighing” with calculation of the volume of milk consumed. This test is completely unobjective and harmful for nursing mothers; it will not show an objective picture even at home, and even more so in a clinic under stress.

We have already mentioned the child’s different appetites and spasmodic growth - at one feeding he can eat 100g, and at another only 20g, only to quench his thirst - what kind of objective weight gain can we talk about in such a situation? It is possible to correctly assess weight no earlier than after a week of control, but it is better to assess weight gain within a month, but what if you need to assess sufficiency right now?

At home, you can easily conduct a “wet film test” - this is an objective criterion for insufficient milk supply. At normal condition Upon receipt of food, the child urinates on average once every 1-2 hours. Thus, he will wet at least 10-12 diapers per pack. If there is a shortage of milk, this indicator drops below 6-8 pieces and consultation with a doctor or breastfeeding specialist is required. If the number of diapers is below 6 pieces, additional feeding is definitely required. What if your baby urinates every half hour? His diapers fill up enough after 2-3 hours of wearing - he has no indication for introducing formula, even if it seems to you that he spends little time at the breast and eats little!

When do we introduce complementary foods?
With the introduction of complementary foods, toddlers naturally experience a decrease in weight gain, but this is how it should be. A child cannot gain a kilogram throughout his first year - he will become obese. The introduction of complementary foods is a replenishment of calories and teaching the child to digest new food for him. And there is no need to force a child, forcing him to eat the “age-appropriate” 150-180 g of porridge. Each baby has its own norms in terms of volume; excess food that you force into it will not do any good, but will only add excess weight and cause an aversion to the process of eating.

You should not follow the lead of grandmothers, to whom the baby “seems too thin” and feed him semolina porridge 3-4 times a day from 4-6 months. Such a load is harmful to digestion and will damage breastfeeding, it is necessary to introduce porridge once a day from six months, and only on the recommendation of a doctor, if there is severe weight loss, you can add a second feeding of porridge before breastfeeding. Throughout the first year, mother’s breast milk is one of the main foods of the child’s diet and you should not replace it with complementary foods for fear that the child will be malnourished.

Mothers always want their little one to eat more and grow faster. But you shouldn’t deceive nature - it has its own laws of weight gain, which you shouldn’t strive to exceed - excessive plumpness of the cheeks, continuous folds and fat deposits on the baby’s body - this, alas, is not a sign of his health at all!

Most often, when a mother hears the cry of a newborn, she thinks that the baby has not had enough to eat. Therefore, the question of how to determine whether a baby is getting enough breast milk is quite pressing. Not all women manage to feed their baby to the full. Many mothers are even ready to quit breastfeeding and switch to more nutritious artificial formula.

Don't make hasty conclusions! It turns out that even in such a situation, the main thing is calm. Signs of malnutrition in an infant can be seen with the naked eye. The most important thing is for the mother to pull herself together and try to determine the reason why the baby hasn’t eaten enough on her own.

Determining that a baby is not getting enough breast milk is quite easy. Here are some signs of a malnourished baby while breastfeeding:

• the baby cries avidly immediately after feeding or after some time;
• the child’s activity has decreased;
• behaves inhibited;
• unusual reaction to the mother’s approach and her smell;
• trouble falling asleep or poor sleep;
• constant crying for no reason;
• problems with urination and infrequent bowel movements;
• active sucking of a fist or anything that comes to hand;
• poor weight gain.

Such signs of child malnutrition during breastfeeding should alert the mother. If a baby does not get enough breast milk, he will rarely have bowel movements. Irregular bowel movements are a bad sign and are associated with the fact that the baby’s body does not fully absorb milk, and the child remains hungry.

There is a misconception that a baby needs to be given water to drink from the first days of life. Water should be given only in the heat of summer or when the child is six months old. Breast milk is not only food, but also a water replacement.

The baby's skin will also help answer the question of how to find out if the baby is getting enough breast milk. If there is a lack of breast milk, they are the first to suffer - they become dry.

If there is an assumption that the baby is not getting enough breast milk, the signs given above will help the mother decide on feeding tactics in the future. Babies aged 6-7 months gain an average of 0.5 kilograms per month. If the food is well digested, then an indicator of 800 grams will be considered excellent. If the baby’s weight does not gain or has decreased altogether, then the mother should start sounding the alarm and consult a pediatrician.

What to do if you don't have enough breast milk

When a baby actually doesn’t get enough mother’s milk, he becomes whiny and develops worse. Do not panic, because all the experiences will not be beneficial and will only worsen the condition.

If you cannot determine on your own why your baby is not getting enough breast milk, be sure to contact your pediatrician. This will help avoid problems with the baby's health.

• Adjust your menu and review daily ration. Breastfeeding mothers are required to eat well. Meals should be five times a day, with small portion sizes.
• Drink plenty of fluids (juice, water, tea) - all this will increase lactation.
• Remove from your diet all foods with strong odors that can change the taste of milk.
• Get enough sleep and exercise in the morning.
• You should not refuse the help of your loved ones.
• Try to take several hours of walks in the fresh air every day.
• Attach your baby to the breast correctly. In this matter, you can contact a lactation consultant.

How can you tell if your baby is full of breast milk? It’s not difficult: the baby’s sleep and mood improve. Urination becomes more frequent, bowel movements are regulated, and, naturally, weight gain occurs.

You can determine whether a young mother has enough breast milk and whether her baby is getting enough of it if you know the main signs of malnutrition. They are formulated by WHO and tested by millions of girls. We are studying the issue.

Signs that you have enough milk

At least 10 used diapers while breastfeeding

One of the main indicators that the baby is eating enough is the so-called wet diaper test. The physiology of the baby is such that most of the fluid received by the baby comes out in the form of urine. Let's count.

WHO standards stipulate that on average a child should receive approximately 150 ml of milk per 1 kg of his weight. That is, a three-kilogram baby should eat about 450 g of milk per day. And from half to three quarters he will “prescribe” from this indicator - that is, 240-400 g.

How can a mother understand whether the baby has “given” his norm? It is enough to know that the desire to pee in a baby occurs when the volume of the bladder is 20-40 ml. It turns out that a breastfed baby should pee 10-20 times a day if he has enough mother’s milk.

To count how many “pees” there were, you need to collect all the diapers for the day, putting them in a separate, tightly tied bag. Weigh this “valuable cargo” at the end of the day, then weigh the same amount of dry diapers. Now you need to subtract the weight of dry “diapers” from the weight of wet ones and divide by 30. 30 ml is the approximate weight of one “pee”.

Also, to control the emptying of your baby’s bladder, you can use only diapers for one day.

The number of “pees” depends on the age of the baby. Up to two weeks, a child usually pees as many times a day as he is days old. After this age, the number of bladder emptyings is approximately constant: 12-14 times in girls and 14-16 times in boys.

Expert opinion:

Elena Sekacheva, “It often happens that a baby has, for example, twenty “pees,” but does not gain weight or gains very little - this means that the baby spends his weight on something else. Most often it is stress. Stress for a child is hardening, massages, too active diving and gymnastics, change of place of residence, strangers, regular tantrums (long crying for any reason), etc.”

Avoid dehydration in your child

If the child wets less than ten diapers per day, you will have to repeat the test again. One day is not an indicator.

At the same time, pay attention to the color of the urine. With sufficient nutrition, it is transparent, colorless and odorless.

If the baby peed less than six times in a day, we may be talking about dehydration. Mommy should be alert to the following signs:

• Dark color of urine.
• Its pungent smell.
• The break between urination is more than 5-6 hours.
• The baby cries without tears.
• Retraction of a large fontanel.

If the number of “pees” is less than 10, it is recommended to contact a lactation consultant who will help you understand the reason for the lack of milk and increase its volume. In most cases, the mother can feed the baby exclusively with her milk. There are times when there is not enough breast milk precisely because physiological characteristics mothers, but this is a very small percentage.

Stool in newborns during breastfeeding

Another indicator that a child is eating is how many times he poops. Wet diapers are an indicator that the baby has received a sufficient amount of “front” milk, and regular bowel movements indicate that the baby has high-calorie nutrition and is also receiving “hind”, fattier milk.

Should be on average two to five times a day. Please note that these are averages. It happens that the child does “big things” after each feeding, it happens that once a day or even every other day. All this is within normal limits if the following conditions are met:

• The stool is soft and mushy.
• Yellowish-brownish color.
• Does not have a repulsive, putrid odor.

If you have bowel movements less frequently, your stool may be a little stiffer. Its color may also change depending on what mommy ate. If the baby’s behavior does not change, he does not start crying, does not show anxiety, and there is no reason to worry.

Baby weight gain

Most weight gain charts are based on monitoring children at artificial feeding and are not always completely suitable for breastfeeding babies.

The weight gain graph is a fairly average thing. Mom needs him to navigate, but there is no need to see him as the ultimate truth and strive to meet his performance at any cost. After all, all children are different: some gain more, some less. However, weight gain is an important indicator of the baby's well-being. One rule is important: every month the child should grow and gain weight.

At the same time, do not forget that on the third or fourth day after birth, the baby inevitably loses body weight, up to approximately 10% of its weight at birth. But in the next 10-14 days he should gain them again.

When starting to calculate weight gain, the minimum weight should be taken as the starting point. On average, a baby up to six months should gain 500 g per month or 125-150 g per week.

Expert opinion:

Elena Sekacheva, lactation consultant:“An increase of 500 g per month is the lower limit at which it is worth seeking help from a lactation consultant to together find the reason for the low gain. Normally, the increase should be 700-800 g per month or more. There is no maximum limit. Breastfed children do not become obese; you should not increase the intervals and give your baby water if he is gaining “a lot.” In the future, he will begin to move more actively and will stop “gaining” weight so quickly. There’s no need to worry about this.”

If you have problems with weight

Every month, mother and baby should visit a pediatrician, who will measure all indicators of the baby’s development - both his weight and height. Such manipulations once a month are enough to monitor the normal development of the child. Therefore, there is not much point in using home scales. In addition, when measuring the baby’s weight, mothers usually begin to get nervous if he has not reached the norm by at least 10 g. They begin to weigh him more often, and try to supplement him with water or formula. As a result of these worries, milk production may actually decrease.

• Always weigh your baby at the same time.
• Weigh your baby in the same clothes, or better yet, without them at all.
• If you weigh a baby in a diaper, it must be absolutely clean and dry.
• You should not weigh your child more than once a week. This makes both mother and baby nervous.

Check weighing

The so-called “control weighing,” when the baby is weighed before feeding and immediately after, is actually not very informative. After all, a child can drink a different amount of milk at each meal, especially if he is fed “on demand” and not according to a schedule. It would be more correct to devote a day to control weighing: when before each feeding and immediately after, the mother weighs the baby to find out the weight gain, and then writes it down. At the end of the day, all the indicators are added up, and the approximate amount of milk drunk per day is obtained.

Breast milk - enough or not?

Often, a mother’s anxiety about this is caused by doubts about whether she has enough breast milk. The exact volume in the bottle is known, but whether there is enough milk in the breast and how much the baby drank, one can only guess.

Here are the most frequent occasions for concern: