to not want to announce my baby’s weight

[TeaAndToys]

I know I might be a bit PFB here but I’m feeling like I don’t want to share my baby’s weight when she’s born. My mum is really fixated on babies' weights, and it tends to get uncomfortable when babies weigh over about 6lbs. She’ll bring it up constantly even when it’s unprompted. For example, a school friend of mine recently had a baby who weighed 7lb 3oz and my mum has mentioned how "huge" he is at least four times, despite me pointing out that he’s perfectly average. It drives me mad, especially since my mum has only seen the Mum once in the last 20 years and is probably never going to meet the baby! But she keeps focusing on it. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly why, but the comments always come off as a negative or judgmental, like it’s somehow a bad thing if babies aren’t tiny. So with my baby I’m seriously considering not telling anyone her weight at all to avoid those kinds of comments. Has anyone else felt the same or done something similar?

Agh I hate to say this but I think you're going to need to address it head on before your baby is born, as calmly as possible. Otherwise you may end up saying something heated when you're sleep deprived once the baby is here. Can you calmly explain that you know you're mum is fixated on weight and that you have had to deal with this your whole life. But you won't tolerate any discussion around either your or your class weight either at birth or in the years to come. Lay that down as your boundary.

What? A 7lb baby is average. What is she on about. Life is too short to entertain this nonsense. Ignore

I would love to know what she thought about my Dad he weighed 14 pound plus and I say plus because the midwife's scales only went up to 14 pound. After he was born the midwife wrapped him up and took him to show the neighbours. My Grandma had 3 sons all born at home and the smallest was 12lb 6oz.

You need to stamp out this behaviour from your Mum now before the baby’s born. My Mum was the same and is very messed up but I refused to put up with it and have just tried to be a good role model. No fashion mags in the house, I never comment on my weight or the size of others and always emphasised being healthy and strong. I was afraid to have a girl because of how my Mum was with me but I managed to raise a strong confident daughter who plays rugby and runs half marathons and is naturally the size she should be. You absolutely can correct the mistakes your parents made with your own kids as long as you and your partner have a united front. Unfortunately I also had to keep my Mum at arms length because she became too toxic. My kids didn’t understand why they didn’t really see one set of grandparents when they were little but when they were teenagers they absolutely knew why I had to do it as she hadn’t changed. Sad but true and I have no regrets.

Weird. A small baby is usually more of a worry to my mind - less developed in the womb can mean slower to hit normal milestones. Of course, babies can be perfectly healthy and fully developed if they are born at at 6-7 lbs, and I guess very large babies can point to issues like gestational diabetes, but on the whole it seems peculiar to obsess about babies within a perfectly standard range.

I think YABU a bit about keeping the weight from your mum - just tell her: 'Please know that if you bang on about the weight you won't be back here anytime soon'? She'll be able to estimate from looking at your child after all.

Am I missing something here?? What the hell has your baby's weight got to do with your mother? She needs to keep her opinions and judgements to herself and I would flippin well tell her so. Its the thin end of the wedge - maybe she won't like your choice of clothes, food, toys etc etc as your baby gets older and people trying to justify a "heavier" baby by saying they may grow up to be petite, average etc is ludicrous. She obviously has some kind of hangup but she needs to keep it to herself.

I'd tell everyone else the truth but tell your Mum your baby weighed 10lbs 3oz at birth. Just for a laugh.

It's your baby you do what you want. Either don't tell her and say it's because she always makes poor comments about it or tell her the weight in metric units and she won't know anyway.

Just say you don't know. I genuinely don't know how much my baby weighed when born. I must have missed it when the midwife said, and never found out.

It's written on several forms of documentation now eg discharge notes, red book, etc etc

FFS I love how some new mums act like their child is the second coming and start acting like Meghan Markle. Don't bother telling your mum anything about you baby but whilst you are at it don't ask her for any help.

Some people are born without a filter! My boys were nearer 9lbs and still little scraps, that look tiny in photos now. All I want to know is boy/girl, name and is everything OK.

Tell your mum firmly that her behaviour and need to comment about something perfectly normal is abnormal. Just rinse and repeat “stop being weird, I’m not discussing this with you again” and roll your eyes and loudly sigh at her. She will soon get the message.

I would just tell her the baby was 10lb 6.
honestly 7.3 is tiny she is being strange.

She sounds like one of my friends. I gained a few stone and my children were 7lb11 + 7lb13 and she pointed out that they were 'big' because I gained weight. She kept saying how she didn't gain much. I know I shouldn't have, but be being sleep deprived and tired I snapped that maybe her babies were small because she smoked a lot and drank loads of caffeine. I feel bad about it now but I was living on a few hours sleep a day while looking after a newborn and toddler.

You should make her feel uncomfortable. ‘Mum, good parents don’t want a tiny baby, 6lbs is much higher risk. I want a healthy baby, everyone I know but me has a mum who wants them to have a healthy baby too. It’s pretty upsetting.’

I was 6lb, trying to feed me up was a habit that stuck with my mum for decades!

Based on averages your baby is going to be over 7lb so you do need to have something firm planned in your mind. Not saying is unlikely to work because it’s written on lots of things, the wrist/ankle bands, red book, hospital card.

Personally I would get the red book out, the one the weight is measured in and it shows you centiles on a graph. Show her 50th centile is over 7lb. Completely average!

It means nothing anyway, I was 7lb 10 and now 5’10” and size 10. My sister was only 5lb but is same height and size 16. My babies have also swapped round, my first born over 9lb is now 50th centile, my second at 7lb 5 is now on 98th centile. Who doesn’t love chunky baby rolls!! 😍

My grandad was 14lb too! Born in 1924. Ouch!!

My eldest was 7lb 11oz and if I remember correctly that was pretty much bang on the 50th percentile for a boy. Your mother sounds ridiculous.

Goodness me. Noone in my family, aunties cousins etc ever has less than 8 to 10lb babies..mine range from high 7s to mid 8s. Quite a few have said they are big weights but tbh these days everyone I know has 7 and 8 pounders in the main. I always measure small and have a little bump but have decent size babies. Does it really matter what the birth weight is?

OP your mum sounds like a right twat.

A baby under 6lb is very small, I can't imagine why she would think that's a great weight to have, it doesn't reflect on how much the mother ate during pregnancy so why think like that...strange woman.

"I don't know the weight dm, the scales weren't working at the hospital, they were too rushed off their feet to get a replacement pair brought back through. Apparently nothing like this has happened for over a decade, but that was a big baby that broke the scales at the time." 😂

Op I think you have a great opportunity to spout some corkers for dm re: baby weight.

I was coming in with an eye roll to vote YABU but when I read your post, I am agreeing with you. To have a fixation on weight at any age is silly but having a fixation and opinion on a baby’s weight is downright weird. Don’t announce weight and when your mum asks, say baby was small and perfect and you were so excited to meet your baby that you completely forgot and it doesn’t matter. x

That is a strange attitude on the part of your mum. My babies were big: 10lb and 9 1/2lb. The sister in the ward carted around the 10lb lad in her arms and made me feel proud of birthing such a whopper. They are both tall slim young men now and are an average weight. As children they were very average in size and weight. Birth weight isn't an indicator of anything OP. So long as the baby is healthy that's the main thing. Enjoy your little one 😊

That’s really odd behaviour from your mum, and just misinformed. I think 7lb 3oz is actually below average these days. I think it’s 7lb 10oz now?