10 Pounds

Ian is growing. He is almost ten pounds. Or he is ten pounds if you don't mind counting clothes and diapers.

There is an interesting store here in Houston called A Woman's Work (I might be a little off on that name). It specializes in breast feeding products, but also has just about anything else a parent might need for a newborn. They are very serious about their breast feeding at this place. So serious, in fact, that they have a newborn scale that is free to the public. I guess you are probably supposed to be a customer to use it, but I don't think it is a requirement. At first it seemed odd to me that they have a scale. Why not just go to your doctor if you want to know how much your kid weighs? Then Betsy explained the true reason for the scale.

When a woman is concerned that she is not producing enough milk, she can weigh her baby before and after feeding. Then she will know exactly how much the baby is eating. Now, this raises a question that I think is obvious, is she going to feed at the store? I guess because it is a breast feeding focused store, this wouldn't be a problem. Still, who wants to sit in a store and breast feed? I understand doing it if you are out and your child needs to eat. No problem. But at this store, apparently, parents affirmatively go there to breast feed. Interesting.

There is another issue with this process. There seems to be a basic misunderstanding here between liquid and dry ounces. A liquid ounce is typically what is used when you measure milk or formula or whatever you are using. A dry ounce is obviously what is measured when you weigh your baby. The two are not directly correlated at all. In fact, to get from one to the other, you would need to know the density of the liquid and do some pretty complicated calculations that left my brain the minute I got through my physics class in high school. So these people's calculations do not tell them how many ounces of milk their child is getting in a feeding.

Another issue this brings up is why do we measure baby's weight in pounds and ounces? Why not just say the baby weighs 9.5 pounds instead of 9 pounds 8 ounces. You will never find a normal scale that shows weight this way, so why is this special measurement saved only for babies?

Anyway, that was a very long way of saying that Betsy took Ian to the store yesterday to see how much he weighs (not to see if she is producing enough milk) and he weighs almost 10 pounds now!