To not put oil/butter in my ds's food to try to fatten him up?

[froken]

Ds is 9 months old, I went to get him weighed today (he has a very small/almost closed soft spot from very young so I have to have his head measuered every month and they weigh/measure him at the same time)

He has gained about 0.1kg in the last 6 weeks.

The nurse was worried about him not following his curve, he was 4.5 kg (10 pounds) at birth and on the 98th centile, now he is 10 kg and on the 50th centile. he looks chubby, he has a little buddah belly and chubby legs. He was 55cm at birth which was also on the 98th centile but now he is only 72cm which is around the 50th centile. me and dp are very average in height so it is no supprise to me that he is average height.

The nurse asked me about feeding, ds eats dinner and lunch, he eats parridge with fruit for breakfast and I breastfeed him lots throughout the day.

She said he was probably not gaining weight because of me still breastfeeding him and if I wanted to continue breastfeeding him I should add oil/butter to his meals to give him extra calories.

Ds moves all the time, he is not stop crawling, pulling himself up and cruising around the furniture, he has been like this since he was 6 months old.

I feel like adding extra calories with no nutritional value to his diet is a bad idea.

AIBU to ignore her? His head measurment was fine but not the nurse wants to see us next month to watch his weight.

If you are feeding him roast dinners (yum) then he's getting fats in proportion to his meal types. Do what feels right for you, from all the advice pick things that make sense to your parenting style.

The BF advice you were given is totally crap, I BF to a year and DD1 climbed through centiles (she was prem so needed to catch up) to the right centile considering DH and I are above average heights. My HV wanted me to bottle feed or express and bottle feed so she could tick a box for amounts when DD1 was struggling to gain weight. I ignored her - lots - but needed to get DD1 weighed regularly. At a year I asked BF weaning advice and was basically told that as a weird extended feeder I'd need to go and find that sort of person to get advice from. I reported her.

Then when I had DD2 she said 'oh I recognise you, didn't I have to give you lots of advice about your first child'. I replied that she had been totally useless in all advice given and I had only attended often so if DD1 had any complications from her early start I'd be covered for the care I'd given her. She was mistress of the cats bumface, in fact she must have lived with that expression from the pattern of lines around her mouth.

Can you tell we didn't get on

if he is in 50th centile for weight and height he is fine, ignore the loon.

My DS3 was 10lb4 at birth, so v high in the centiles (98th?) He lost a lot after birth and although he regained it and fed well etc, he never got back to the 98th centile (he is now 2.7 and about 70th, I think).

My view is that he was very overdue and just wasn't really meant to be 10lbs (DS1 and DS2 were both under 7.5lb) and just adjusted to something more average. Centiles for height and weight matching is good, I wouldn't want to be doing anything to alter than balance.

I got similar advice when DS was 6-12 months old. He was formula fed by that time, and I never restricted fats in his diet. He started dropping down the centiles, and my healthcare assistant basically told me to smother everything in butter. As he was already getting a decent amount of fat in his diet, I ignored her. DS is still small and thin 5 years later and occasionally I wonder if that's because I ignored that advice, but I'm reasonably confident that giving him more butter wouldn't have made him taller.

He still gets butter and eats a lot of cheese, yoghurts etc. But he's never been a big eater and neither DH or I are particularly tall. I think he gets a fairly balanced diet overall.

In fact, if you increase his calorie intake, he will only get fatter - not taller, so he won't be in proportion and may become overweight

This is what I should have said to her. Surely if he needed to get taller his body would take some of the lovely chub from his tummy/legs and cheeks.

This drives me nuts, because in the last 4/5 years they have changed the guidelines, it is now thought that birth weight/centile has absolutely NO BEARING on how big a child should be - it's more related to the mother's size and the gestation of the pregnancy.

Instead they are supposed to take the weight/centile of when they were 2 weeks old and use that as a starting point. Even then, it's fine for them to cross two centile lines, which means they can perfectly happily go from the 98th to the 75th to the 50th with no reason to worry at all.

Plus the fact that, yep, adding random things to his diet (unless medically prescribed supplements) is a waste of time. You shouldn't avoid fats for young children, but there's no reason to pile them on either.

You can see evidence of this in the chart in your red book - there will be a gap between birth and 2 weeks, because the birth weight is irrelevant to their general weight curve.

yanbu to avoid adding extra fats if he's already eating full fat meals eg porridge with full fat milk, roast meat incl the fat, etc.

it's normal for weight gain to slow down a lot at this age - they are more interested in rampaging around than eating, and using up more calories.

if you're finding it hard to get him to sit down for meals, you could try a highchair toy - dd loves hers.

I have a good friend who was told that breastfeeding is effecting her sons growth hormones negatively and she should not be breastfeeding anymore (d-friend's son is the same age as my son)

Good lord, where do these people get their ideas from? Breastmilk is food and cannot effect growth hormones. If its any reassurance of just how far from starving your baby is, DS only put on 500 grams between the ages of one and two and still only weighed 10 kg when he was 84 cm tall. He was still a perfectly healthy active little boy - just a rather slim one with a small appetite.

See - it's not only the HV's in the UK that need shooting!

Frankly, most of them don't know one end of a baby from the other and shouldn't be allowed to do anymore than note the weight of the baby in the book.

She is an idiot - ignore the daft bat.

I had very similar.

Birth weight is partly based on how efficient the placenta is - so while mine were all born big when bf they came down to average weights.

HV were a nightmare especially with DS who put on very little over a long period - but he crawled early and was very active.

I had the same advice - and did do some more fattening dishes - as young DC do need more fat than adults but it made little difference to their weight.

They are all perfectly normal healthy weight ranges, normal activity levels and on the tall side. All in all a lot of stress and pressure over nothing in the end.

You can try looking a bf charts for weight gain - just in case the nurse isn't uing those but mine fell well done those as well. I just had very good placentas apparently - as the DC weight a lot but weren't 'fat'.

Snap, Loa (and froken)!

My DS was also right at the top of the chart at birth, 10lb 4, and was a voracious feeder but still gradually dropped down and down the charts and ended up I think rather below average - but still very obviously healthy.

Luckily I had a more sensible HV, who agreed with me that he was just finding his natural size - DH and I are also only average height - and who was also supportive of me continuing to BF. Later on, DD proceeded to have almost exactly the same pattern of dropping down the centiles (though not quite so extreme, as she was born smaller) and looking at them now, they clearly just have a reasonably slim build and are the way they were meant to be.

I also got the "good placentas" comment too - had a huge bump as well

Both my DDs were tiny tots at birth (6lb2oz and 6lb6 respectively)

By around a year - 18 months old both had settled to the proportions they are at 15 and 12. DD1 slightly taller and heavier than average and DD2 exactly average.

My DFs 9lb and incredibly tall at birth DS is still, probably a touch taller than average (her DD1 is very tall), but quite slight.

As long as they have a reasonable diet DCs settle to the size they are genetically meant to be

DS1 was on the 75th centile at birth and has gradually settled under the 25th. What matters more is that height and weight are proportionate. We see the dieticians because of food allergy, and they place more value in the look and general health/ activity of the child. His diet has ended up being lower in fat than the ideal as he misses out on dairy fats, but I think that my short genes are having an effect, especially as he blatantly has my tiny stumpy feet.

BFing is perfect to give a child what they need alongside solids, so ignore!

WTF? Complain and recommend the HV for more training about BF. Does she not know BM changes according to the child's needs? That everything about it does and that's why it can never be replicated?

It's totally normal for bf babies' weight gain to slow down after about 4 months. Mine both did. Nothing to stress about if he is healthy and happy.

That said, I agree with others that babies and small children do need oils and butter in their diets. We all do, but especially them.

Food before one is not just for fun, the WHO did a big study on it. Breastmilk is not nutricious enough for a baby after six months.

whqlibdoc.who.int/paho/2003/a85622.pdf

 "Breast milk can make a substantial contribution to the total nutrient intake of chil- dren between 6 and 24 months of age, particularly for protein and many of the vitamins. However, breast milk is relatively low in several minerals such as iron and zinc, even after accounting for bioavailability. At 9-11 months of age, for example, the proportion of the Recommended Nutrient Intake that needs to be supplied by complementary foods is 97% for iron, 86% for zinc, 81% for phosphorus, 76% for magnesium, 73% for sodium and 72% for calcium (Dewey, 2001)." 

"...the Expert Consultation concluded that the potential health benefits of waiting until six months to introduce other foods outweigh any potential risks. After six months of age, however, it becomes increasingly difficult for breastfed infants to meet their nutrient needs from human milk alone (WHO/UNICEF, 1998)." 

"Average iron intakes of breastfed infants in industrialized countries would fall well short of the recommended intake if iron-fortified products were not available (WHO/UNICEF, 1998)"

Ffs so he's found his natural "line" and is happy chubby and healthy eating well and being breast fed? Failing to see why he needs anything adding to his food!!! Breast milk will have al the fats and calories and nutrients and far better than olive oil on porridge good god.

Butter and oil do have nutritional value. But i wouldnt add them to porridge.

There's no harm in a small amount of unsalted butter with potatoes/bread. It's better than fake spreads full of hydrogenated fats.

Oil is fine used in the normal way in cooked foods.

My breastfed DD hardly ate anything before she was 12 months old, but she hung on to her weight percentile. Clearly she was getting a lot of calories from breastmilk!
I did however add more fats to her diet, to the foods she liked, as she was not a big eater, so what she ate I felt needed to be high in fat and nutrients.
Luckily she adored avocados (we used to joke that she was made up of 50% BM and 50% avocado!), and I put olive oil in soups as she likes soup and also she likes mushroom, so I fried them in butter. Otherwise just offered her normal food.
I have to say though, blended roast dinner sounds absolutely disgusting...what's wrong with it unblended and offering it as it is on a plate . The different textures to explore etc might mean that he might stay at the table a bit longer?

She is talking rubbish.

Think about it, a baby has no choice about how many calories it consumes in the womb. They are what they are based on various factors I'm sure - efficiency of placenta, mums diet etc.

When a baby is born they often find a percentile line more natural to them. The likelihood is that you are average and your child will be average. Mine all moved down percentile wise but I knew they were healthy.

I wouldn't bother with extra calories from crap food. If you do want to go down the route of getting extra calories, try avocado, almond butter etc but not obsessively.

My HV told me it was fine changing percentiles but should then mostly stay on whatever percentile they have moved to. My 4 year old ended up just below the bottom percentile and has hovered there for three years now.

Also all my BF babies didn't really take properly to food till 10 months.