Are breastfed babies smaller?

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So perfectly friendly lady asks how old my babies are. Her and her DP we're trying to decide. Both suprised they're 11 months as they guessed older.
I confirm yes they are indeed big, they're now in 18-24 months.
She says they're probably bigger than her 3 to.
I do the polite chuckle how how big they are indeed.
Then she says it's likely because she breastfed hers and breastfed babies are smaller

I wasn't quick enough to tell her I bf them (I didn't but I resent the insinuation that I didn't because I have twins when plenty of twin mom's do) or to really say anything because she then left.

But firstly is that even true?
Was she just defensive because I have beastly babies?
Was she shaming me for over feeding them with an evil bottle?
Why do I even care?

I've got a very small baby (various reasons) and it's hard not to feel defensive when there's another child at the park etc who's the same age but much bigger.

I completely get this, my son is petite and get comments on how "tiny" he is by random strangers which is..still annoying when he is 3 and people just can't help themselves !

Not in my case Fully breastfed and 98th percentile she is now 13 months and fills her 18-24 month clothes. When she was a couple of months the health visitor didn’t look happy she had jumped centiles but couldn’t say I thing as she was breastfed and they always say you can’t over feed a breast fed baby.

My first baby was exclusively breastfed and was huge - 91st centile. My second, very premature, very sick baby was bottle fed high calorie milk, and was below the lowest centile until they were about 2 and a half.

Their height and weight at age 5 were pretty much the same.

Absolute poppycock. I bf one child and he was 99th centile until 3 (now) and ff the other child who always stayed around the 50th centile throughout his first 4 years.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 I never used formula and son has always been 90th centile. She is talking total nonsense.

I breastfed both of mine to over a year. One was small (and still is as an adult) the other was over 95th centile. (Skinny as a rake now though).

I wonder if it’s that mums who have to have a caesarean (and therefore are in a physical recovery themselves) often find BF more difficult?

Anyway, I believe at a population level, yes, BF babies are very slightly smaller.

Not true always- a friend BF her DS until he was about 12 months and he was permanently on the 99th centile!!

She was EBFing him and a health visitor even she suggested she try and feed him less! (She didn’t). He’s a very healthy 17 month old now.

I have an BF baby and she's 11 months in 12-18 clothing and even then, I think she could easily fit in some 18-24. Or it won't be long.

Im breast feeding my baby she is small my others were bottle fed & they were small but my breast fed baby hasnt went through a cubby stage where my others did.

2 BF babies and both small I think 9% centile

Not my two, they were like little Buddhas. HV used to joke I had jersey cream

Both DC here were breastfed and both were huge. DS2 was 10lbs at birth and gained a pound a week for a long time. He was just a unit and I went with it. Aside from making sure he ate I never really gave a shit what he weighed til we went for a checkup and I realised he looked like he'd eaten several of the other babies there for a checkup.

They're both still very tall, so they're probably not representative of breastfed babies. I think it's as much genetics, long-term diet and activity levels as much as it is breast/bottle.

It had been a recognised problem with the red book growth charts at one point- they were based on formula fed baby data and on a wider level it led to midwives pushing breastfeeding mothers to worry about feeding.

There will always be individual who know of huge breast fed babies or tiny formula fed ones but yes, in a wider scale, formula fed babies are bigger.

If you Google it, kellymom has some good info on it. Looks like it was 2006 that WHO released charts based on breastfed babies to help fix the problem.

My DS was EBF for 6 months. He was generally in the 90th centile and above. He's consistently been the tallest in his class since. He's in Year 2 now.

On a population basis, yes, bottle fed babies are heavier. They had to remake the centile charts to base them on breastfed babies, and the curves were visibly different. It doesn't mean you can tell whether any individual baby is breastfed or bottle fed though.

My solid, 9lb 6oz born, exclusively breastfed baby was, and remains, now at 8yrs old, much bigger than average for her age. Her appetite has always been insatiable and she's always been off the chart size wise.

So for us, the complete opposite is true.

I have 2 babies who were born weighing 1 oz different (not twins), and bf them both. One followed the 75th centile and 2nd is following the 25th.

Nope my bf child went from the 30th percentile to the 99th purely on mummy milk only. The rolls where amazing

Aaaagh this drives me nuts - (the people with their opinions on how much your baby weighs and how you feed them, not you OP). I have four kids, all BF. The first two were chunky, the twins were the opposite. I spent my entire maternity leaves apologising for over feeding the older two and under feeding the twins. It pissed me right off.
The centile charts are based on formula fed babies in America (for what it's worth) but the problem is that no one has enough of their own babies to know whether their kids were just genetically big/small or if they over/underfed them to make any scientifically sensible comment. So you get a lot of anecdote/bragging which ultimately never makes you, on the receiving end, feel good.
I have a few choice comments I throw back now, which usually shuts them up.

Ignore them. However you have chosen to feed them is great. And (and I am saying this from one twin mumma to another) TTTFO - twins are hard. Feeding them is hard (especially with other kids in tow). Enjoy the twins and the fact that you aren't making people feel small by making senseless comments

Mine was born on the 25th centile, within 3 weeks he jumped on the 50th and he was EBF, then jumped to the 75th. I was worried I was overfeeding him but I made sure I even spaced out the feeds enough etc.

He's now back on the 50th and he's almost 2.

Clearly my EFB loved his milk, I am sure they would have blamed it on me bottle feeding if I had bottle fed

I have one 50th percentile toddler, who's been that way the whole of his life so far. And I have a 2nd percentile 19month old who still wears 6-9 month clothing.
They're all different and I have to remind myself of that everyday! I struggle not to compare my 19mo DD to others as she's small and it makes me sad, so I may have asked you how old they are and then been surprised. But felt down after as my DD is so tiny! - was also tube fed for some time/allergies etc.

Anyway, fuck her! Don't think about it anymore. It's definitely more about her than you and everyone really is different.

well, I have 3 who were ebf.
But dh and I are my mum both tall and my mum had big babies.

Mine were all large babies (ds off top of scale) and remained at top of centiles.

But I have always assumed that was due to genes rather than anything else.

They were slim though, they never had the roly poly baby fat, or th echunk that some babies had. Skinned rabbit was ds!