To play devils advocate for a second, I would add it’s important not to discount what the doctors are saying about weight gain or loss but rather to ask more questions and get more information instead. When my daughter was born we were told by the doctors she was losing too much weight while being told by lactation activists that if we bottle fed at all it would mess everything up. When she lost so much they were going to have to readmit her to the hospital we started supplimenting and found I had almost zero milk supply and had been essentially starving the poor girl to death for more than a week. She’s fine but I still wish I’d been on top of it enough to not listen to everyone else and follow my gut to get more information instead (like your suggestions of weighing before and after feedings).
There is also the issue of today’s babies being compared to the “charts” that the antenatal community use for percentiles and standards of weight vs. Height. These statistics (in Australia at least) are based on infants from the 1970′s when the majority of infants were immediately formula fed and therefore gaining more and faster than breastfed infants. This has led to mothers being unnecessarily and overly concerned about weight gain and loss particularly in the first few weeks therefore relying on supplementing or exclusively feeding.
While I am a great supporter of exclusively breastfeeding for the health advantages etc I have been unable to breastfeed my two children for more than 8 weeks in the beginning.
I believe that as a mother you need to be aware of how unique your baby is. Learn what works for you and YOUR baby.
This is exactly what happened to us, and ironically at the hospital affiliated with the university that performed the IV fluid retention study. I had read about, and refused to supplement (my milk had just come in, so it was ridiculous anyway). My little one who lost 9.8% or her birth weight was back up to it by one week old. On breast milk alone.
If you get in this situation, another thing they can do (so you can prove your milk is in) is weigh the baby before and after the feeding to make sure they’re eating!
And another note– I learn from my LC in the hospital that when women are induced, and when they have preeclampsia, a double whammy for me, the milk often comes in a little bit late. For me, it was right at about 72 hours. And that’s right when the doctors do their best to make the new mother feel like she’s a failure :)
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