What's Wrong with Taking Baby's Birth Weight?

Image of Baby Scales

Where do I begin with this one...aside from the fact that it's an unnecessary stress to the baby as soon as it comes out of the cosy womb, it also doesn't take into account factors that can inflate the weight, like fluids mother received in labour or maternal conditions like gestational diabetes. Even just waiting like 12 hours would be way more beneficial than straight as baby comes out, but then that wouldn't be conducive to the streamlined "get everything done all at once" birth machine.

One of my biggest issues though is that this potentially skewed number then becomes the single biggest marker, the determining factor, in how feeding will look just 3 days from that point. Say What????

Yup. Because in 3 days another weight will be taken and it will then be decided from that number, whether you will be "allowed" to continue exclusively putting your baby to the breast, or whether you will need to introduce a bottle of supplemental milk. Now from the perspective of many outsiders, introducing a bottle of expressed milk isn't that big a deal, but here's what generally happens at this point...

👉 parents lose confidence in their ability to breastfeed

👉 they struggle to express so introduce formula

👉 due to the aforementioned point, milk supply drops

👉 it can impact baby's latch and suck at the breast

👉 parents begin to lose sight of their baby and use quantifiable markers to judge things (in some cases obsessively)

Sometimes excessive daily or every other day weight checks can begin, further inducing anxiety in parents. In most cases, there will be NO ACTUAL FEEDING SUPPORT GIVEN! Feeds will not be observed to determine intake, alterations to increase intake without a bottle are rarely undertaken, and in some cases unnecessary unskilled information will be given that can be even more detrimental.

While I will consider the birth weight in my notes, I NEVER make a decision based slely on that. And I ALWAYS look at the full picture of how baby is feeding and whether other factors may have impacted weight and introduce elements to get intake up while still breastfeeding.

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If you would like to hear more on this topic, you can listen to my interview with Helen Thompson at First Time Mum's Podcast Episode 123

Supporting Postpartum Transition

Becoming a mother is one of the biggest transitions in a woman's life. Whether a positive experience or a negative one, it'll always be one that shifts our life onto an entirely new trajectory. I hear a lot of talk about how you shouldn't let children change you. I remember pre-children saying I wouldn't let kids change me. And in many ways I did try to hold to that belief, but what I found was I became so unbelievably unhappy with the mothering experience, because I was at constant odds to reject that I was becoming a different person. I felt I was losing myself and grief was coming up for the woman I once was but was struggling to connect with.

I didn't know then, but I know now that you can't stop the transition that comes with becoming a mother. Birthing a baby sets off a process that alters your physiology so that it is completely impossible to be the same person you were before having a child. Baby brain...it's a real thing! You are actually rewiring thought processes and emotional response patterns. Mothers go from their thinking brain that is shaped by their general environment, to responding from their instinctive, subconscious/limbic, brain.

This instinctive brain is the one responsible for the hot flushed feeling you get when your baby is crying and you're struggling to settle them. It's responsible for the overwhelming need to breastfeed your baby despite thinking (before their arrival) you wouldn't be fussed if you couldn't. Becoming a mother and the change we undergo can be a beautiful thing when we accept it and allow the process to unfold naturally. However, for most of us this process goes unsupported by current birthing culture and definitely by the larger collective culture. We are often ill prepared for our postpartum journey after having spent months preparing for birth. And what's more is that most of our preparation and most of the attention postpartum is very baby centred, not mother centred.

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"Mothering the mother fortifies the new mother's resources for coping with the enormous demands of newborn parenting. Whether it's done by a relative or a doula, support for the intense transformation taking place is essential."

-Diane Speier

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So, we can find ourselves lost in the confusion of joy, but grief, love, but also resentment, and most of all guilt. Guilt for not feeling all the joy that we thought we'd feel. Guilt for wanting to run from our baby when it cries, because we were hoping for just a bit of rest and a moment to process what the hell is going on with us. Guilt for wanting to be with ourselves for 5 minutes and for it not to be about the baby. It's okay. You are not wrong or bad for feeling this way. It is a normal process that we must all face in a transition.

Transition is the crossing over from old to knew and our body is physically in need of being held and receiving compassion to pass though that grief process. You have permission to let yourself fall apart and to be unsure of what the hell is going on, and even whether you want it. You'll get through it and you'll come out as the butterfly. You may not believe it to start with, but it will happen.

Things you can do to support the postpartum transition period:

⭐ A diet high in healthy oils and fats and carbohydrates

⭐ Meditation (download my free meditation and sound bath)

⭐ Non-sexual hugs and cuddles with a partner that last at least 20 seconds, but the longer the better

⭐ Rest! If you can nap with your baby then do that. At a minimum, grab a tea and biscuits and watch some rubbish tele, but rest

⭐ Sit with other women and chat. Milk Mentors run regular breastfeeding support groups in Bedford and Milton Keynes. Come along and get to know others in a similar postpartum transition period as you.

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Changing the Conversation Around Birth

Birth is a miraculous thing, because it's one of few things that every single thing on this earth has in common, but I'll narrow it down to humans for now. 😉

Even if you are a man who decides to never give birth or have children with a partner, you have been birthed. So here it impacts us ALL. Not just the process of birth, but the gross appropriation of what once was a natural process, revered as sacred and to be respected. Birth is now managed by a highly medicalised institution that results in high proportions of trauma for both mother and baby.

What happened? Well, like most things, man wanted to know how something works and if they could make it "better." As if the natural workings of mother nature didn't have it all sussed out already. Birth was taken by the patriarchy, from midwives to male gynaecologists.

All knowledge of it was diluted, lost. We started to see the interventions cause pain and death, but then blamed birth as risky, instead of those that managed birth as causing risk. And so here we are, in a culture where we're so far removed from the process that most of us know nothing of it until we become pregnant ourselves, and in many cases we venture down this road towards labour with fear. Fear of pain, fear of things going wrong, fear of death.

We write birth plans that help educated us somewhat, but even then it's to inform our body and mind of pain and risk we may need to prepare for. Managed third stage or natural? Episiotomy or natural tear? Drugs or hypobirthing?...

Systems don't give up control, The patriarchy won't relinquish its control. Men and women and all non-binary, we have to do this TOGETHER. Because even though maternity care is literally "of the mother," it is not just a mother issue to be pushed aside, so that we're reliant on the traumatised person to push a written complaint through to a system that will just continue to ignore it.

We need to change the conversation from MORE STAFF to MORE EDUCATION! We don't need to keep recycling stories of risk and trauma to women every time they become pregnant, but instead support them with education. We need to begin disseminated down to the children, what our bodies are capable of and stop being embarrassed to discuss it. Birth unites us all and stripping people of this knowledge and connection keeps us further disconnected and makes it harder to stand up for a unified cause that can alter the state of society for the better. Changing birth culture from medicalised and traumatising to responsive and healing can positively alter the entire state of humanity.

But as long as this conversation stays amongst the proportion of people that birth, and even smaller population of people that have been traumatised but found healing to come forward and fight, society will continue to ignore it. As Desmond Tutu said, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.” and we need to change it.