Slow growth of the child - almost 2 year old

[ritusharma]

I am new to this forum, so please excuse if posted in wrong thread.

Family
I am a stay at home, house-wife.
My husband is employed full-time.
My dear daughter is 22 months old.

Situation
My daughter was born 3 days before estimated due date.
Her weight was only 4.4 pounds (2 Kg) at birth.
Without clothes, she currently weighs 17.64 pounds (8 Kg) at age of 22 months.
Her height is around 71 cms and has grown just 1cm in the last 4 months - actual measurement not what we feel.
She is on vegetarian diet, and a fussy eater since birth.
She can't speak any sentence, but can say words - She can identify 6-7 different colors, and 6-7 different parts of body.
As I am stay at home parent, she has never been to a nursery although, she goes to toddler playgroups 4-5 times per month.
She doesn't have fully flowing girls hair yet, she only had one complete hair cut at age of one, and nothing since.
Both me and the my husband are deficient in Vitamin D

Question
We are concerned about her height and weight growth.
We are not concerned that she is on bottom percentile, but we are concerned about the growth rate.
Please can you advise on:
1 - How to develop her interest in eating?
2 - Should we send her to infant schools or nursery once she is 2 year old?
3 - How to improve her weight and height growth rate?

1 not sure how to develop her interest in eating apart from modelling healthy eating habits and a love of food. Do you eat together? Is she tracking her Centiles, both height and weight?

1. Do you want to send her?

1. There’s no need to improve her growth unless there is an actual problem, like she’s loosing weight rather than gaining or has dropped more than 2 sets of centiles, say from the 50th to the 9th.

You might find Help My Child Won’t Eat
helpful.

What sort of things does she eat in a typical day? How much milk is she having and what sort and is she having any supplements?

Sorry almost forgot, welcome to MN!

Have you talked to your GP about this OP? She is on the 0.4th centile for weight but well below the 0.4th for height and I think this certainly warrants a discussion with health professionals. I’m not trying to worry you, it may be nothing, but I’d definitely visit your GP.

The centile charts are here:
www.rcpch.ac.uk/system/files/protected/page/A5%20Girls%20UKWHO.pdf

Agree with Dont. If mine were on that centile I’d be taking them for a check up at the GPs too. Which centile was she on at birth?

It does sound like you should chat to a GP. But on the food issue - my daughter is also on the small side (25th centile since birth, so not really cause for concern to anyone but me) and eating was always a struggle - like yours, she was never really interested and it caused us so much stress. Over the last year or so she has improved a lot. It has been a long and boring process but basically we identified the few meals she actually enjoyed and gave her those most of the time but gradually added different elements (a different green veg, new things in the pasta sauce etc), also used sticker charts to encourage trying new things, got her involved in cooking and shopping. All of that probably sounds impossible at 22 months where it seems everything is all or nothing but believe me, once she’s a bit older and can talk/understand things more, she will try new things and even like them! Ours is still generally the shortest kid in the room and she still has fussy phases, but we don’t worry about it any more.

Is she getting plenty of variety in her diet? Have you got her on any supplements such as Wellbaby? My DS is 23m and goes through weeks of eating everything in sight then weeks of picking at food. In line with this we see his height surge then tail off. I’ve you seen similar even at a smaller scale?

How are things OP?

Hi Ritu,

I am facing exactly the same thing. Daughter is 22 months and only measures 71cm and is 8 Kg. Reading your post made me feel like I am reading my own story. Please can you let me know how is she now and if the height picked up as my daughter is also a very fussy eater. I have ran many tests but for now they havent picked anything. She looks smaller than most 1 year olds