Fat shaming baby

[Alee36]

Perhaps a bit of a sensationalist title! 😂 Writing mostly for a rant, but otherwise, for any genuine advice. More a 'am I being oversensitive' than unreasonable.

I am a ftm to my darling little girl, who is 3 months this week. She was born at 40+5, weighing 6 pounds 15, a decent and average birth weight I thought, though it was cited that she was 'small for her gestational age', by a number of midwives and by health visitors at subsequent visits.

LO is ebf, and was slow to put on weight, not any cause for concern, though consistently mentioned, and I was asked to consider supplementing feeds with formula (I didn't in the end as she started to catch up).

At her last weigh (14th Oct) my LO was 13 pounds 4, I've taken her today and she is 15 pounds 6. I am/was absolutely made up and relieved with her weight gain, given her slow start and the fact that breastfeeding is so hard to quantify.

The health visitor on hand today said 'hmmmm she's in the 91st percentile and hasn't moved since last time, bring her back for monitoring next month'. I was anxious as my first assumption was that she wasn't weighing enough, but when I asked if all was okay, she said that if my baby was bottle fed, they'd be suggesting dropping a few ounces, but that they couldn't say that to me. Then she said 'I can see that she's tall, so maybe it's okay'.

MAYBE??? What's the issue here, is there one? I was also struggling to get back on my baby's suit as she was wriggling and the woman said 'maybe it's a bit small for her'. (It isn't). I was outraged. I'm not slim myself so felt like there was an overall judgement there. I'm probably being oversensitive, but convinced it was an odd exchange all round. AIBU?

Is my baby huge? Can you overfeed breastfed babies?

Thanks!

Hahaha!! Don't worry about it OP. When a baby is ebf there isn't anything you can do about their weight!

My baby (DS1) was pretty much exactly as you describe - 6lbs something at birth, small and skinny. Then as he got the hang of feeding his weight sky rocketed quickly to 98th centile and stayed there till he started running around about age 2! His weight gradually reduced to about 75th centile for a year or two. Then, from about age 4/5 he went down to 50th centile where he has stayed.

He is 13 years old now! He is still 50th centile for both weight and height. He was exactly 50th centile at the year 6 health check thing a couple of years ago!

He is the perfect weight and height for his age. He's really fit (very sporty) and it makes me laugh thinking back to when the health visitor was implying I was doing something wrong when he was ebf at age 3 months.

Babies that are ebf just are whatever weight they are. If he's still heavy by age 4, then I'd probably worry. But right now he's a cute chunky baby that is clearly feeding well :) 👍

My son was 8 and a half pounds at birth. He soared above the top percentile line and they had to paste in extra paper to chart his weight. He was a huge baby and toddler. People said I had a potential rugby forward. He is now an average sized medical student.

My second son was no more than large as a baby and toddler. He drank formula and milk by the litre. He is a particularly skinny adult.

I myself was a bouncing near 10 pounder. There are photographs of me as a toddler practically bursting out of baby woolies. I grew up to be a skinny teenager and adult.

I think your health visitor is an idiot.

For the record, I'm not bashing health visitors/midwives at all. It's a beautiful and noble profession and no doubt overworked and underpaid, and we owe them a lot. I'm also not opposed to monitoring and am forever grateful to live in a part of the world where healthcare is so accessible.

I think my issue was that if you can't overfeed a breastfed baby, as is the consensus and indeed the NHS stance, that saying you'd otherwise suggest a mum drop ounces from a feed hardly seemed worth mentioning/unhelpful. That along with 'maybe' it's okay and the further suggestion that my baby's clothes didn't fit, just struck me as a peculiar exchange!

Thank you for this, a very level perspective and I agree. :-)

I had a 91st-centile EBF baby. He was an absolute boob addict - he was 6lb 6oz when he was born at 36 weeks and 8lb 9oz by his due date. The health visitor did mutter a few times about how he'd crossed another line on the chart, and until he started crawling, he was basically spherical, but then he got very tall and very active and it all evened out. He's now 17, nearly 6 ft 2, and a perfectly healthy weight.

Could you explain this, please? How is it different?
genuine question! 🙂

Take everything the HV says with a pinch of salt. In my experience they drift out of professionalism often and give their opinion more than official policy.
My baby was over 8lb when born and was exclusively breastfed, she quickly got onto the 91st percentile and was racing through the clothing sizes, had lots of little rolls and round cheeks and then plateaued at around 6 months.
Hardly gained any weight but has grown and is healthy. She's now quite small for her age at 2.5, which makes sense since my husband and I are below average height.
Nobody ever mentioned the 91st percentile being an issue and I brought up her plateau and nobody cared or thought it was odd that she went from 91st percentile to 20th.

Suckling on the breast is quite a lot of effort, and the baby will only suckle until they are no longer hungry. Even if they stay on the breast to "comfort suckle", they're just flutter suckling and not drawing a lot of milk out. The flow of milk from the breast is not so rapid either, so they have time to recognise their hunger cues or lack of.

A bottle triggers the sucking reflex and is very easy to get milk from, so a baby will take a bottle even when they are not hungry. A baby will guzzle a bottle of milk far too big for them and then quite often throw it all back up if they haven't been properly pace fed.

I never bothered to take my baby to be weighed after the first couple of times... stupid comments like the one the OP experienced made the whole thing pointless!

Ignore them. They actually don’t know much, it’s all mostly text book learning and well babies and children don’t come with a manual 🙈😂. In my time I’ve had lovely hv’s but also very opinionated ones. I had one with my 3rd judge because my daughter was in the 91th pecentile at her weigh in before her first injections…… she was over 10lbs at birth…..she was bottle fed and I was quizzed how much she was having she actually was a terrible feeder. Obvs I wasn’t a first time mum so I already knew what they could be like so I actually asked her at what weight should she be and she couldn’t answer my question and actually answered with ‘well all babies are different’. So was like “sooooooo what point are you trying to make because you actually make no sense’ 😂😂 also that ‘fat’ baby of mine is now 14 and such a dinky dot despite her rolling into the world 🙈😂.

I was later told with my following babies that as long as they follow a percentile with no sudden drops or jumps they are growing just fine.

so please don’t worry. With my twins (4th&5th) my 6th (now 2) and now my 7th (1 next week) I have never gone to weigh ins nor milestone checks, if they’re happy, and I’ve no concerns I know my children better than any health visitor. They all reach and hit milestones at different times. Just enjoy motherhood and ignore the silliness of some people.

There's no getting around this. Your baby is fat. Why are you taking it so personally?

I breastfed both my DC. The first health visitor I had was shockingly ignorant about breastfeeding. Thankfully she left and her replacement was fantastic. And she was there for my second child 4 years later too. There are good and not so good health visitors. You were unlucky OP. DS1 looked as though he'd been blown up with a bicycle pump until he was about a year old🤣 Such a chubster. He's 16 now and would blow over in a stiff breeze.

What a load of shite.

My middle child was 9.2 lbs born and stayed very chubby until he started moving around.
He was on the 91st centile and a few people passed comment. He is now one of the tiniest of his year group, he’s super active, fit and healthy and is just below the 50th centile for his weight.
I wouldn’t worry 🙂

I can’t figure out from what you’ve said whether the HV is worried she is too big or not big enough. Anyway she clearly hasn’t a clue what she’s talking about so I’d happily ignore her. Take her for the ‘monitoring’ (?!) by all means but take it all with a pinch of salt.

The bicycle pump is such an accurate description, we keep saying that she's like a balloon I'm blowing up 😂 xx

I know someone who was told her (admittedly very chubby) EBF baby was, and I quote, "a milk addict" and that she should try to cut back on feeds.

I wouldn't worry about it at all! My husband and I used to joke I made 'whale milk' because my babies put on weight so quickly. One tripled his birth weight by 6 months 😅😬 He's absolutely fine, a trim active 11yo now. The tendons in my wrists have never recovered from lifting him but that's another story!!!
If your health visitor is still thinking in terms of formula fed babies, it's worth checking if they're using the correct growth charts for breastfeeding bubs. The original height/weight percentile charts are based on a population that were almost exclusively formula feeding. Formula fed babies gain differently to breastfeeding babies - it's a more smooth and steady growth compared with breastfeeding bubs. Neither is wrong of course, just different, but if you're comparing a breastfeeding baby with the formula fed charts they are going to look 'off'.

Sorry I think that was a bit unclear. Breastfed babies are known to gain faster up until around 3 months, they then slow down more than formula feeding babies. So a breastfeeding baby would be expected to sit on a higher percentile at 3 months than at birth, if those percentiles include mixed feeding & formula feeding babies.

It's easier to get milk from a bottle than a breast. It's generally too much work for babies to remove milk from a breast if they're not hungry (comfort sucking doesn't remove much milk).Whereas a bottle tipped into baby's moth will drip milk even if they don't suck at all, more so if they comfort suck, and then they kind have to swallow it before they choke. So they end up drinking more than they really want or need.

Ignore the HV - they do say daft things at times. One of them told a friend of mine that she must ‘treat her baby like an alcoholic’ and limit his feeds! He was a big, hungry baby and only 2 months old!

FWIW my Gds, now 8, was a real little porky Michelin man in the (EBF) early months - until he was admitted to hospital with severe bronchiolitis. He was sedated and tube fed for several days, and of course did lose some of that weight. Sick babies can lose weight alarmingly quickly - they have that store of fat for a purpose.

He was still very much on the chubby side until he started running around, but is now super- slim, constantly on the move and full of energy.

Just no need to worry here even if she looks like a little baby seal. If she’s breastfed she is getting what she needs. Babies have different patterns of development. My 3rd child was a very fat EBF baby at 3 months. I remember some little summer dresses that previous daughter had worn at that age would not do up around her neck. She grew into a completely normal sized toddler/child/adult, neither overweight nor underweight. Trust in the process!