How important are centiles and how many is it ok to drop over childhood?

[mayaknew]

Ds was on the 91st centile at birht. He was 10lbs.

He is now 5 and 3st exactly and on the 10th centile. He is small in height and wears age 4 clothes.

There's other factors going on with his also digestive stuff but I just wondered if the drop in centiles was normal or could b3e liked to digestive issues? He's not aneamic he's had bloods done.

Bump

Mine was as big as yours when born. Then dropped fairly quickly to 50th centile. He’s tall and skinny and perfectly healthy. So yours could be perfectly normal. But if he’s not eating that could be a factor too.

The birth centile is not an accurate predictor of the centile that is appropriate for a child because it is influenced by mum. Many babies fall down the chart before they "catch" onto the line that reflects their genetic make up. It's called " catch down". Most babies roughly follow a line once they have "caught down". It is extremely difficult to say what is the appropriate weight centile for a child. The height and head centiles need to be taken into consideration as well as the parents' centiles. My child was born on the 50th and fell to the 0.4th. This triggered a referral to a peadiatrician who could not find anything wrong. At age 16, they were back on the 50th centile.

Mine was in the 25th percentile. Now is four and is in underweight category so we went to docs to get him checked out. Doctor said they tend to worry more about obese rather than unweighted. DS is tall and skinny and eats huge portions. I put it down to him being very active and I make most of his food from scratched so little processed. However always best to get checked out with doctor if concerned.

Was the 91st centile for height/length?

If it was for weight but not height it doesn't necessarily mean much.

My DS1 was on the 99.9th centile for height/length at birth. The GP remarked at his 6 week check that he would be 6'6".

He has severe allergies so his diet at times was pretty meagre. By the time he was a year old he was still on the 99.9th for height but only the 25th for weight. This worried me greatly but HV always brushed aside my worries. As he got older the heigh centile came down, was at 9th age 5, 90th age 8 etc. Stopped at 75th and at 18 he is just short of 6 foot and weighS 9 stone.

I don't think he would ever have been six foot six but I do think the dietary restrictions may have made him an inch or two shorter than he might have been.

A friend's DD is intolerant to dairy and (although her Mum is petite) she was much the same size as her 18m younger sister to the point that people thought they were twins.

My youngest was over 95th at birth - weighed in at 9lb 13oz. She was a podgy toddler with creases in her legs and lovely plum cheeks.
By year four she was below 10th - referred to paediatrician as she also had persistent enlarged lymph nodes and was recurrently unwell. Nothing much found. She ended up at 19 as 4 feet eleven ad a half inches, size 2.5 feet and usually a size 4 clothes or from childrenswear.

Her brother is nw 6’4” having been 10lb 2oz at birth. He’s been up and down even as a young adult. He around 95kg but actively tries to maintain a hgh normal BMI for rugby. So probably been above 95th most of the time with the odd dip down to about 70th in the summer.

Their sister was also born big but settled as very middling - now around about 5’ 7” and usually a size 10 clothes.

I never got overly excited about centiles as they change so much. As a society I think we get overly hung up on weight instead of health. I never had my babies weighed as the centile charts aren’t particularly good for breastfed babies and any suggestion of weight loss can undermine feeding success.