HV has told me that my 20 month old DD is overweight. I'm at a loss

[Unappreciatedandfat]

I've always put in every effort to make sure she eats healthily, she loves fruit and veg and I make every meal from scratch, no junk etc. She has small portions and they fill her up easily. She has the very occasional treat and only drinks milk or water.

We live on a farm so she's a very active toddler (she's been walking since 11 months) and just generally loves being outside. I'm so disheartened because I really thought that I was setting her up for being fit and healthy. I've recently lost 3-4 stones in weight jus through doing more exercise.
I see my friends with their toddlers who are a similar age and the right weight and they're fed chips, crisps, chocolate and given fizzy drinks and are sat inside all day long watching TV. What the hell have I done so wrong?

I agree sharon I think HV have a very difficult job, they often have to deal with very hormonal and tired new mums and anybody, whether they feed their children a balanced diet or not are going to be touchy about somebody telling them that their child is overweight, just like I was am

Find it difficult to comprehend though that she didn't think to recalibrate the scales or try a different set, she's caused me a fair bit of upset today to them re weigh and find that actually, she's a perfectly healthy weight, there's no such thing as the average baby, toddler or adult and they will all grow at different rates.

I think the message is check before worrying too much. This is not the first such thread, suspected obesity, 200 posters come with advise etc and confirm the child is indeed very heavy. Cue OP saying, oh, she's a foot taller/ half a stone lighter after all.

I'm glad you found out where the HV was going wrong, she certainly didn't look like a child carrying an unhealthy amount of weight and from your description of your food+activity it would be very odd to have a child who had such a high weight.

Congratulations on your weight loss

I just wanted other people's opinions? I don't know what a 15kg child looks like!? All I knew was that she eats perfectly healthily, gets plenty of exercise and still fits in the clothes that correspond with her age!

My HV threaten SS with me because my dd1 head was small. I took her to the doctor explained what had happened with the HV. My Doctor reported her to her supervisor.

FWIW my dd1 is and always have been very tall for her age, but has a very small frame.

Sharon, I haven't joined in any HV bashing but I do wonder what benefit comes from the HV team. My eldest is 11 and when I asked for a chat test 10 yrs ago none if the hvs had heard of it. In fact, through 4 children (youngest is 3) I have only ever come across 1 HV who understood the importance of protodeclarative pointing in relation to communication difficulties esp ASD. They were the only one who had used the MChat. In fact I only ever noticed the HV teams where I have lived giving advice about feeding and weaning and nappy rash, most of which seemed obv to me. Unless baby is dropping down the centiles, is off the chart, can't use pincer grip by 10mths etc, they have never seemed interested. All stuff that most educated women already know about.
With my now 6yr old, I was concerned about some developmental stagnation and unusual hand movement and worried that these indicated early signs of Rett disorder. Again, my HV, a supposed health official had never heard of Retts even though it's the second biggest cause of neurological disability in girls in the uk.
If my children were unusually slow to roll/crawl/walk etc or the leg creases weren't even or pointing hadn't emerged by 14mths or no single words by 18mths; all that sort of stuff then I would have gone to my GP simply because I didn't have any faith that my HVs knew much more than me. This is based purely on my past experience. Is love to hear that my experience is rare though as id then have more faith in the system.

My Son was massively "overweight" as determined by centimes at that age (like off the chart 99.999%). There was nothing much I could do about it because he didn't eat much (was still breastfed and it was hard work getting him to eat much of anything) and very active. I wasn't bothered, all my husband's family were the same as babies and all grow up to be outrageously strong. He's almost 3 now and has lots most of his "fat folds" as we used to call them. At that age they're very unlikely to over eat if you're giving them a healthy balanced diet (and they need a lot more fat than adults at that age). If she's getting lots of exercise too then you have nothing to worry about.

It's all the comments about hvs being useless and they should be ignored that is blatant hv bashing. What else would you call it?

Mrs DV- when I was a paeds nurse a very senior a&e nurse weighed a child and got the numbers back to front. The number written down made the child massive whereas their normal weight was fine. I was a bit but I guess we are all human and capable of making errors

Are you 100% sure your scales are right? I think by looking at her your scales are more likely to be right but i'd want to weigh her again elsewhere to be doubly sure then I would be pissed off with the HV for using broken scales and causing you stress.

I don't think for one second she looks overweight, she looks perfect to me and I am used to seeing very underweight toddlers so many of them look bigger to me than they are, but all I see is a perfectly healthy looking toddler.

As for HVs. I had two amazing ones when my eldest was a baby who helped me through a deep depression and were the kindest people I have ever met. I can't praise them enough for what they did for me. When they retired and I had my two youngest I took them to be weighed as tiny babies than didn't see them unless I had to because they were as useful as a chocolate tea pot.

I think that in this case the HV might deserve a bit of a bashing. She spends a huge part of her working life weighing children, she should have been able to look at the measurements and the child and recognise something was not right. At my DS's 8 week check my HV measured his head, went to plot it on the chart and then went back and measured again cos she said she could tell that the measurement was wrong as it was telling her he was out of proportion when she could see that he wasn't. I'd expect a professional to be able to recognise when something clearly isn't right tat her than causing a parent unnecessary worry.

My HV plotted DD's weight wrong when she was about 6 weeks old. It was disturbing because it looked like she'd dropped to the 9th centile from the 75th at birth and as I was bf-ing she made noises about me supplementing with formula (which I ignored). The dr weighed her the next day (unrelated appt) and noticed it had been plotted wrong (it was a student HV but had been overseen by a qualified one). I know HV's are only human and everyone makes mistakes but it can have worrying consequences for children.

I took my child with failure to thrive to A&E. I had good reason to go there, trust me.

A dr weighed him and told me he has put on a stone.. in two weeks . Got a different dr to weigh him and he had lost a pound. I was not impressed. Human or not, common sense should have told her that the child couldn't weigh that much and to check her scales.

That's appalling op. Mind you I was once in hospital and an HCA recorded me weight in pounds as my weight in kilos. I had to listen while the nurses talked about how I must be a big lady .

My HV threaten SS with me because my dd1 head was small. - This has really blown my mind. Did she think you'd washed DD at the wrong temperature or something??!

Why get them weighed or go to the clinic at all when they are 18 months? My DDs were never weighed "officially" between being a few months old and the health check in reception.

Our little one was supposedly overweight for ages, on and off, but he's super active and never ate that much. He's just a muscly baby (the midwives and doctor both said this when he was born!) and he already looks like a little rugby player. He's strong and athletic and I wouldn't change that for a second- each kid is different. People often freak when you don't fit into the 'average' without really having an I depth appreciation of things like body composition, natural build and basically everything that might go into that kid not fitting into 'average' as s/he should. I bet your little one is doing great.

Just read that the HV made a mistake-glad to see you gotto the bottom of it!

I don't object to the HV in this situation being scrutinised. I do however object to the blanket statement always trotted out on these kind of threads stating health visitors are crap/useless/to be ignored

Bluesky- sorry but how can a baby be 'muscly'

sharon a baby can have more or less muscle relative to height just like an adult can. It's partly genetics and partly lifestyle.

DD1 was something like two stone at 18 months, pretty solid and chunky. Now she is 4 stone 4lbs at 9, very slim and fit. I think it's really hard to tell at 20 months, DD1 started looking slimmer at 3.

My HV couldn't translate lbs, which her scales were calibrated in, to kgs, which the red book uses. So DD had apparently shot from the 75th centile to off the chart in three months. I had just had DS and was so stressed and overwhelmed anyway. Never saw her again.