1st 1,000 Days - A Legacy for Life - Very interesting Radio 4 prog

[GraceK]

Caught this The First 1000 Days: A Legacy for Life on Radio 4 this afternoon & was impressed enough to download it as a podcast (along with last week's episode on pregnancy). Basic premise is that your diet in utero & during your first years in life helps 'programme' you for life and that any major changes to your diet after that can cause problems.

DD1 was small at birth (4th percentile) and EBF for first 5 mths & then BF til almost 2 years. She followed her percentile curve for all that time & I had to strongly argue with a number of MW's against 'catch up feeding' (as it's called in the programme) of extra bottles / more high calorie snacks. Listening to this made me feel very glad I stuck to my guns - partly made easier by my mum backing me & my being skinny as a kid. Plus being part of the Southampton Women's Survey which is also looking at this sort of thing.

Do have a listen - very interesting.

Hi GraceK
Haven't had a chance to listen to programme but admire your strength when dealing with people trying to get you to topup feeds with bottles etc. My dd1 was not premature weighed a healthy 8lb 2 at birth but quickly dropped to 25th percentile from 90th. I was also ebf but was made feel such a failure and believed what they told me about dd1 not gaining enough weight blah blah blah that I gave up bf when she was 9 weeks and always regretted it. And surprise surprise her weight gain did not change she remained on 25th percentile and 4 years on she is still on 25th percentile! Took them a while to cop on that it was her natural growth curve

V interesting, thanks

There was a Horizon documentary also about this subject earlier in the week

Those bloody weight charts have got a lot to answer for!