If you had a low birth weight/prem baby

[timpanie]

When did you stop being anxious about feeding/weight gain?

DD was born at 36 weeks weighing a bit over 4lb. In two months she has more than doubled her weight - obviously still tiny for her age but the midwives and health visitors are happy if she stays steady.

I feel like I can't shake my anxiousness around feeding, though - frequency, duration. She's EBF so difficult to tell how much she's had and if anything is less than her normal I worry she's going to drop off the charts. For instance, the last couple of weeks she's suddenly started sleeping longer stretches at night as well as feeding less frequently in the day and whilst on the one hand I want to think it's normal (and great!) as she's presumably developing and her stomach capacity is growing, I can't help but worry.

I've asked at her weighing appointments and they say to just take the weigh ins as they come. The next one is in around a month. Did anyone else feel the same? Thank you!

I can't answer your question directly but I just wanted to reassure you: I was born at 32 weeks weighing 3 lbs. I'm now many years older, in decent health (and above average height, for what that's worth). Try not to worry - if the medics are happy with progress, then all is well.

Ds was born at 32 weeks and 3.9 lbs, I can't ever remember anxiety about his weigh gain. We rarely went to the baby clinic either. I just fed him and that was that. Plenty of other things I was anxious about though!

I had the anxiety with mine, probably until the 1 year check when we were well into weaning. Found she had maintained weight centile but shot up in height so obviously thriving.
How old is your DD now?

It’s so difficult letting go from the ‘must feed every 2-3 hours’ mentality that you need to develop with a tiny one, but remember that most people feed on demand so if you’re moving towards that, it’s good progress.

I was constantly worried about mine loosing weight and not putting enough on!
She was EBF steadily dropped weight percentiles and ended up dropping down 3 - no one was really concerned and I was beside myself!
I constantly wanted to weigh her as her clothes wouldn’t fit as well and she’d drop nappy sizes but realise now she was stretching 😂
i felt anxious all the time but was assured EBF babies can vary in weight a lot. Constantly thinking I should switch to formula so I had an idea of how much she was taking. I persisted and when she started on solids wow she ate! She built up 3 weight percentiles to where she was born at!

nothing helps the worry apart from hindside I suppose I’m hoping with my next I’ll be more relaxed but I doubt it 😂

I felt the same. DD was born at 28 weeks weighing 2 lbs, and she has spent her whole life between 0.4th and 2nd centile on the weight chart no matter what we try and do. There has definitely been a lot of anxiety for me but a few things have helped.

Firstly the medics are very relaxed about it as long as she actually stays on the chart, which she almost always has, and I take a lot of reassurance from that. Secondly once I could see that she was hitting her milestones, seemed healthy and alert and energetic that took some of the worry away. I also remind myself to trust her body - she knows when she’s hungry and full and her body won’t let her starve (obviously different if there’s some digestive problems/malabsorption etc but in our case there isn’t). It sounds like you’re both doing well, I think it’s early days and you will relax over time as you see her growing.

I had 3 teeny little prem babies born at 33wks2days. My daughter was only 3lb2oz when she came home. No issues with weight gain. They're shorter than average as adults, but happy and healthy.

Just for reassurance my ds is 6.4 now and no other issues.

I would say 4/5 months. DD was born at 36 weeks quite heavy at 6lb 7 but dropped into the mid 5lbs before we left hospital and struggled to gain weight so we were on a feeding plan. There was one horrific nurse/midwife person who basically threatened a feeding tube if we couldn't get DD to take more formula.

It made us both so incredibly anxious to the extent that we wrote down exactly how much formula at what times and added it up every single day for 4 months. Looking back I was slightly neurotic!

The anxious feeling started to go when DD started visibly gaining weight, she was so skinny at first but as soon as she started to chub up at that 4 month mark it was like a weight lifted and it was all so much more relaxed.

Ds was born full term at 4lbs due to pregnancy complications. He was EBF and was a very sleepy chilled baby. I was supposed to feed every 4 hours at least and ended up having to wake him. Caused quite the row between two health visitors- one from the "never wake a sleeping baby at night club" and the other one waving the growth chart.
Anyway I was a size 16 starting breastfeeding and a size 10 finishing it. After about 4 weeks he woke up and ATE. Went from being not in the growth chart to 90th centile for weight. Levelled out after a bit and he tracked 50th percentile until he hit 12.
At 12 he grew. 5 shoe sizes and 6 inches in one year. Never seen anything like it. Took him to the doc as apparently this is borderline worrying. Doc said that in his opinion DS was genetically supposed to be a big lad but my uterine problems slowed things down. When he hit puberty it kick started his growth to where he should have been (the shortest man on both sides of the family is 6'2" and I'm tall so 50th percentile never quite made sense)
Anyway he's now getting taller every time we look at him, eating me out of house and home and doing really well at school. To answer your question- I've probably JUST stopped worrying....

Being honest - about the point she got mobile and I was chasing around after her at which point things got too bloody frantic to have time to worry about weight gain! (DD1 was 33 weeks)

Now she's 11 year old, tall, legs everywhere and you'd never believe she was as small as she was.