To think health visitors have a large part to play in obesity in the uk

[Superchop]

Yes I'm being unreasonable to do another health visitor thread
Yes I'm being unreasonable to group health visitors altogether I'm sure there are lovely proactive health visitors.
But...

I would argue there is a ridiculous emphasis on weight gains and loss for babies which causes mothers and fathers to obsess over milk and food intake. I think this pressure and concern from health visitors along with the graphs and centiles leads to over feeding and parents losing their basic instincts and common sense. I.e does my child look like they are healthy/ are they happy the majority of the time.

I'm willing to be told I am being unreasonable. I am not trying to be judgemental to those who use health visitors I personally ignored them and dc has only been weighed by the doctors and midwives at the check ups.
Interested to hear others opinions

I wonder if the influence of an older generation in a child's life can have an impact, an older generation where chubby was good. My dn lives with my MIL, and at nearly one, lives on baby food, drinks juice in vast quantities, and crucially, doesn't get opportunities to be active. She spends her day in a walker in front of the TV; she has never just been allowed to kick about on the mat, for example. My MIL genuinely believes that ready meals are fine to have daily, that "meat on your bones" is healthy, and that sweets are fine in vast amounts if they "contain fruit juice".

She frets constantly about my normally sized dc: they aren't chubby; they are ill. If she exerts thks influence over my SIL, who lives with them and seems to do what her mum tells her, I fear dn will grow up unhealthy

Yabu. Formula feeding plays a big part in childhood obesity.

manchestermummy that does sound worrying! I live with my mum and whilst she does have some views that differ from my own she is all for putting babies down to kick, and would never question my judgement on feeding.

Formula feeding plays a part in childhood obesity what does that even mean what are you saying what a load of shit. And where are all these fat children I live near a primary a walk through to a high school and the kids are not wobbiling to school with fat spilling out of their blazers.

Do you not know mrsjayy formula feeding = forcing babies to finish a whole bottle even if they don't want to = obesity,

No way could us formula feeding mums be able to tell when they have had enough and therefore stop. No way could we understand our children

Well my children were hooked up to a feeding machine get some meat on their bones

Some people still believe that fat baby = healthy baby.
When I worked in child health the HVs used to complain about parents bringing their babies to be weighed every week, wanting them to keep putting on weight as if it was some kind of an achievement.
They'd regularly turn up despite being advised there was no need. It was a waste of everyone's time.
NHS guidelines say that healthy babies don't need to be weighed very often, not more than 4 times in the first year.

My dd and ds would have died if that happened.

The lack of weighing was one of the reasons dd ended up in SCBU.

Not sure putting the lives of babies at risk is going to combat parents feeding their dc huge portions,junk and providing little exercise.

And as for ff causing the obesity epidemic,what utter,utter shite.

I strongly believe generational influences are at work sometimes. Finishing a meal, for example, and not learning about feeling full can lead to unhealthiness. My hv never suggested I had to force my dc to finish a bottle (I mixed fed. Would anyone like the story of how one of my breasts produced no milk at all and my other hardly anything before telling me i should not have topped up) so I cannot see that is the fault of the hv. It's the parent who was brought up to finish every morsel on the plate regardless.

When my MIL talks about "meat on your bones" she means not being able to see anything other than a covering of fat.

My dad tells the story (albeit from c50 years ago) where a couple of his colleague doctors were asked to judge a baby competition. They duly made their judgement and pronounced the winners, based on healthy babies.

As soon as they'd left the room, the parents annulled the results and gave the prizes to the chubbiest babies as at the time, that was what people thought was "good"

I got a proper telling off from a HV at a weighing clinic when DS1's weight had plateaued at 20 weeks old. I later found out that it's normal for this to happen, but she said it was a sign that he wasn't getting enough of my milk and that I must give him solid food immediately.

She frightened me so much I bought a box of baby rice on the way home from the weighing clinic.

A box of baby rice does not an obese child make.

Puréed chicken nuggets,an obese mother during pg,parents setting poor examples re eating habits after,children not getting exercise alongside eating huge portions of the wrong foods on the other hand will.

No, but it was the first time anyone had made me worry about his weight and told me I wasn't feeding him enough. He was EBF on demand until that day.

So.

Unless the weaning was followed by that listed below I'm not getting the problem(bar allergies).The thread is re the obesity epidemic.

Seems to be a lot of hand wringing over the wrong things on this thread imvho.

My hv was very good, not interested in the.centiles at even though dd

Yabu.
I doubt you can blame the concern over a babys weight gain with parents stuffing their childrens packed lunches with carbs such as cake bar, petit filous style sugary gloop, and crisps, pretty much daily.

Direct your anger at how this nation feeds their children daily, rather than at a profession that is helping your child thrive.

Every where I go I see children eating crisps and drinking pop. Every school dinner is followed by a pudding, where children often get two helpings of chocolate brownie and ice cream.

Of course, having pudding and snacks such as crisps, biscuits, chocolate and cake daily will cause kids to put on weight. They may exercise enough when they are young to stay slim, but as soon as they are in a more sedentary environment, such as college, or work, it is too late. The habit of a life time of treats will catch up with them, and they will balloon.

If you look at a childrens meny in a restaurant, it is nuggets and chips, sausage and chips, burger and chips. With Icecream thrown in as a meal deal. Where is the nutrition? Not in processed food, fatty dairy ice cream and chips for sure!

As it happens DS1 did have food allergies - now outgrown them, fortunately, but for a while we were trying to 'fatten him up' on high calorie foods as we incorrectly thought he was underweight due to the HV's bad advice.

I think its ridicolous to blame health visitors for the obesity crisis. There is very little they can do change mildly crap parenting. The US has no health visitors and there are plenty of fat american children.

The rise in obesity is caused by more sedentary lifestyles. Our children are often glued to computer screens/ TV/ WII/ IPADs instead of running about. We have cars and drive the shortest of distances because working parents lack time. We put less effort in to cooking and the knowledge of how to cook from scratch has been lost. I believe that poor quality food in daycare is a massive issue.

My health visitor supported me when dd's weight fell from the 50th to the 0.4th centile. She supported me when I refused to have a paedatric referral. Many health visitors are good at their job.

Formula feeding plays a part in childhood obesity what does that even mean

The science is discussed here:

Formula Feeding and Obesity

"The science is discussed here"

On the AlphaParent blog!

Ffs.

Good grief that link was scary.

Formula babies do put on more weight. Recently the baby charts were updated to show growth of healthy breast fed babies. In the past some breasted babies wrongly diagnosed with failure to thrive.

I have had a look on the web and can't sensible links. There might be issues with nutritionally enriched formula, but there is little proof that bog standard formula causes problems.

It's an interesting point, but I think you're looking at the situation the wrong way round.

IMO a parent would have to already be anxious/competitive/generally overly invested in their baby's weight in the first place to attend regular baby-weighing clinics in the first place. They can only spout their nonsense advice about feeding and percentile charts at parents who can be bothered to turn up.

I'm glad my dc put on weight with formula they were hugely underweight before.

That link quite frankly is appalling,the shitty pictures of the prop fed baby(I had twins and never did that)and bottle fed/ adult doll.

Ff isn't going to cause obesity for a child with a healthy lifestyle anymore than bfing will save a child fed junk and given little exercise from obesity.

A kid whose mother was obese during pg and whilst being bf will have more chance of being obese than a ff kid with a healthy lifestyle.

Wow, what a rational and unbiased review of the literature from The Alpha Parent. I'm sure she absolutely did not hand pick the studies that supported her hypothesis. Because hardcore lactivists are so known for their tolerance of formula feeding