Failure To Thrive

Mothers should pay attention to these indications:

Is the baby losing weight 10 days after birth?
Has the baby not regained birth weight by 3 weeks of age?

If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’, urgent changes need to be made.

Some of these changes can be done by:

1. Checking for anatomic variability of mother and baby
2. Altering feeding positions and ensuring effective latch
3. Teaching breastmilk expression techniques to mother
4. Checking on milk composition of foremilk and hindmilk

Other checks to be conducted for the baby:

1. Making a weight monitoring chart
2. Examining the baby to evaluate oral muscle weakness and alter reflexes like rooting reflex, sucking and slowing reflex and other oral motor reflexes
3. Checking for weakness of oral muscle tone.

Based on these checks, alternate feeding positions, assistive latch, stimulation training and toning of weak muscles and alternate feeding methods are suggested.