Aibu to Feel judged about size of son!

[Angliski]

Ftm here. Conceived after five years of struggle, my gorgeous dS is 18 months old. Thing is he is very tall and strong. Off the charts of red book. He looks about 3- weighs 17kg nearly 90cm tall. He’s not fat, he has a six pack almost and likes lifting bricks. He has all his teeth and is just a big and advanced boy for his age.

Thing is, he was conceived by egg and sperm donation so he isn’t genetically linked to either of us. People always comment on how astonishingly big he is for a 1.5yr old, then they ask if DH is/was big. Don’t know how to reply to this. Will never know what his donors looked like as kids.

I feel so ashamed because I couldn’t use our own genetic material and I don’t know how to answer.

We are in Italy atm and today someone walked past and said he was ‘brutto’ which means ugly.he is actually a very handsome child who looks like a surfer but he is a weirdly big toddler. I was so upset. Also I am fat and very ashamed of it and think people think he is fat like me and/or doesn’t look like me ( he isn’t my colouring).

Aibu to get upset? Any advice?

Brutto is not necessarily an insult without context

Enjoy him - ignore the 6 pack comments an£ scorn and if he doesn't have rolls of fat and wearing a shorn-off 34 inch pair of your partners trousers then it will all come right unless you are force feeding him like a foie gras 👍🏻

Have you got the weight and height wrong?!

He wasn't called ugly, you just didn't understand the compliment.

Have you had him checked by gp/hv? He is tall but if his weight were proportionate to his height he should be several kgs lighter.

Just tell people he’s from the planet Krypton and you don’t know much about his parents. Ignore the haters - they’re just jealous you’ve got such a beautiful, strong son.
Keep an eye out for his growth just in case he’s got a hormone imbalance

(Stolen from healthy children.org)

Too Much Growth Hormone (Hyperpituitarism)
Gigantism occurs when there is an excessive secretion of growth hormone in children before their normal growth has stopped. This results in overgrowth of the long bones. In addition to vertical growth in height, there is also growth in muscle and organs. The result is a person who is very tall, with a large jaw, large face, large skull, and very large hands and feet.

I dont think it means 'ugly' in that context. More like its english counterpart 'brutal' as in big and aggressive. Brutus as a name meant 'heavy'

I feel for you.. When my was 2 he was on track to be about 5 ft tall. Both sides of our families are all strapping lads of over 6 ft so this caused quite a few questions.
Then one day my DH and I were looking at some old family photos of his mother's, and I asked who the little man in the middle was. "Oh that's my father she replied" (died long before DH was born). By the way, he made it to 6 foot.. but only just.

Just invent an Uncle Sven the viking to mention when people ask and smile proudly at your strapping, healthy, gorgeous son who has fabulous gross motor skills.

A toddler with a six pack?
You need to find a better way to describe him cos that’s just weird.

On another note, my DS has been 15kg since about 14 months. He’s not fat but he’s tall, he would have been chubby at that age but now he’s two, still 15kg and lanky.
Also I’m fat as fuck.

OP I am sorry you are feeling this way.
Your DS does sound a bit heavy for his height- and that is nothing to do with genetics I'm afraid.

My children are very tall. Over 90% of height. I’ve just weighed them. DD1 is 22kg but is aged 5 and in clothes for 7 and 8 year olds. DD2 is just 2 but has been in clothes for 3 to 4 year olds for a while and weighs 12kg.

If your 18 month old weighs 17kg I think you need to speak to a medical professional about that.

And I don’t think the comments about morbidly obese or fat are nice at all!

They may not be nice to hear but they are true, and that is far more important. There is no point being nice and pretending to OP there is no issue here...there is. OP's son is heavier at 18 months than mine was at 6 years old!

I'm pleased that the PP has misunderstood the word brutto. Definitely time for a joke about him training with Dwayne Johnson or representing Italy in World's Strongest Man.

I've had a similar experience with my DS. He is adopted and looked 3 when he was 1! At 10 months the health visitor came to visit as he was a newly adopted baby was so shocked at the size of him! She gave me a separate sheet to plot his development because he was off the scale of the red book graphs. He is now 15 and 6ft 4 tall. Handsome and well built but with not an ounce of fat on him. He makes my 6ft DH look tiny in comparison so we've had al the comments about where his size comes from. You just learn to smile and move on.

My son was quite big and tall whitest still under 4 ish. And he had reflux so GPs automatically assumed I was over feeding him so I has to go private because they just couldn't see past it and fathom looking into the care he needed for that.

He's now 14 and rather popular with the ladies - I've driven past him walking home and there are skirts everywhere fawning around him 🤨

Also op if he was icsi i think they can get an overgrowth syndrome. Beckwith-weidermann i think. Which it would be important to know as they are more prone to cancer

This is interesting. My DS is an icsi baby, was massive at birth and as a toddler and now upon reading more about Beckwith-Wiedemann, he actually some of the features of it. We always put it down to just little genetic quirks (for example he has a very unusual ear pit and a very rare dimple pattern).

OP, people were the same with my DS at that age, obsessed over his size. They still are obsessed with his large birth weight even though he's 5 now. I just used to say 'yep, a big healthy boy, going to be a star rugby player' or similar... It is tedious though.

Also once when I was Italy I remember someone shouting 'Milk! Haha! Milk! Yes?!' and pointing at my face. Yeah I'm very pale. I know.

My friend has a child conceived with donor egg and sperm. Lots of people comment that he looks nothing like either of his parents. Maybe they feel awkward about it inside, but they just give a standard reply and don't seem worried.

Also, 17kg is very heavy for his height. Maybe worth a chat with a health visitor about his diet?

6 pack lifting bricks over egging there op

Oh OP had a similar sized toddler and on holiday in Gran Canaria some locals would point and laugh. I'm just five foot and with a small frame so he appeared huge in comparison. They called him Rambo. He just grew into his weight and by three he wasn't exceptionally chunky and by four he was no bigger than any of his peers in nursery. He's over 30 now and slim and shorter than average so never grew to the size his size as a toddler suggested he might be. As for when people ask I'd just say his Grandfather is very tall, it doesn't have to be truthful but it gives an explanation to satisfy the curious.

If your health visitor is not worried about his size, don't worry about anyone else. Also as other posters have said, I suspect the passerby just meant "gosh, he's a big one!".

I remember one little boy from DS's baby group who was just massive, strong and much more physically advanced than the other babies. He was also more adventurous, communicated better, and was up dancing when the other babies were still trying to sit up straight. As you can imagine, it nearly gave me a complex about my small and developmentally unspectacular DS.

By the age of 3 the other babies caught up, and similarly the big one's growth evened out and he is a perfectly normal sized (and still smart) kid.

Also "he takes after himself" was the standard answer to questions about resemblance when I was young.

The truly amazing thing is this isn't the first time I've seen an MNer claim their young child has a six pack. This site is brilliant entertainment.

Why does everybody on here have 8 foot teenage boys?

You’re not unreasonable to be upset but he does not have a six pack nor does he lift bricks. I’d reevaluate what he’s eating because this isn’t a healthy child. He weighs a lot more than my five year old who is much taller!

My son was big .. he was a big baby and at his 1 year check up he was off the chart .. the baby clinic really worried me .. I thought he would end up being 8 feet tall with size 16 feet!!! ... I was so upset !! He's 21 next month .. 6 feet 2 with size 11 feet .. people say such stupid thoughtless things about babies .. comparing how many teeth they have , when they walk etc .. please don't let it upset you OP.

Why does everybody on here have 8 foot teenage boys

Same reason they all have high earning DHs and very slim DDs I’d imagine.

I wish people would stop talking about being over 6ft tall as though it is some sort of achievement.