Just got a letter home from the school nurse re: dd's weight

[fireflyfairy2]

She is 115cm & weighs 28kgs.

It says "XXXX weight has gone from 91st centile to above 98th centile. Please contact me to discuss referral to peadatric dietitian"

I know she is a big girl, but she is also tall for her age. She's well built but I didn't think she was overweight.

I am such a failure.

I am about 20lb overweight myself & dh had weight to lose.... I know dd eats very very healthily as I have already lost over 2 stone & she has been having what I have ben eating.

The sensible option is to change the whole families lifestyle to be more active & eat more healthily.. I know we can do that, but I just feel like such a failure at the minute.

Dh thinks it's ok as he had to attend a dietitian when he was young.. but I don't think it's ok. Dh was an obese child & I always blamed his parents when I saw photos of him from childhood... now look what I have done to my beautiful dd I've made her fat, just as I have always accused my MIL of doing to dh

I have heard to make sure half the plate is covered with veg. A fistful of protein (think cheese) seems quite a lot to me.

No that's meat or fish protein. Cheese portion is the size of your thumb.

Shame.

sorry!

It did sound a lot. Imagine a piece of Brie the size of your fist!

That must depend upon the size of the plate...

At 2yr health check ds swaped from being on 95% height and 75% weight to 95% weight and 75% height - HV not worried in the least. When he lies down or sucks in his belly, you can still see all his ribs. Then I look at his legs and realise that I've seen 5 yo with smaller knees (ie the bony bit, not fat round it) and think that its build.

I do, however, keep a close eye on him as both dh and I have weight problem. He starts the morning with home-made muesli (organic porrige oats, organic raisens, organic brazil nuts or other seeds chopped up) with goats milk. Normally the problem tends to be trying to get enough down him as he wants to run round all the time, although I do have to limit the amount of fruit that he is allowed, otherwise he would eat a whole bunch of grapes, several pounds of strawberries, or half a large pineapple all in one sitting, and I worry about the implications of this quantity all at once.

Low GI might be worth looking into as you feel more full for longer, eg oat based breakfast rather than processed cereal?

"Cheese" isn't in the same category of food as meat or fish in the French school of dietetics that I know about (and where I heard the fist measurement thing). Cheese is a dairy product and is eaten as a separate course - you have a yoghourt OR a piece of cheese before pudding.

Just to clarify

Firefly2 I think she looks beautiful and you're obviously a brilliant mum to be so concerned and increasing her exercise etc.

I think I looked very similar at that age though have always been very active and I grew out of having a tummy (until childbirth early this year that is!) and roughly a size 10 now. My parents always had a very healthy attitude to food and I do think it's helpful not to draw children's attention to diet too much as so many people at my secondary school had anorexia, I don't know if that's unusual but it was quite competitive. So I think by all eating well as a family you're already on a good track.

Sorry, am waffling!

Hello Fireflyfairy!

I say this without prejudice to your situation - this is just my experience: my family are fat - all of them. I was bought up where a treat was a kitkat and when anyone was upset they had a cup of tea with toast with a thick layer of margarine on top.

I don't eat like that now and actually I'm the skinniest of the lot of them. But it is hard to break out of patterns formed when you are younger. In my family, thinness was unattainable so wasn't prized. We were all bonny or well built where actually we were all a bit porky.

What made the difference for me is that I lost a lot of weight and decided I actually was brave enough to be thinner (you get a lot more attention and that can be nerve racking) and I decided to stay that way - more or less - since.

Now my daughter is 8 months old and she's on the 98th percentile and it worries me - especially as she has breastmilk and then not much else. Most of it goes on the floor and what goes in is healthy, but I know I'll get the nth degree from the HV when I see her next time. I am worried about it but there's not much I can do at her age. I'm just hoping that once she starts walking around she'll burn it off.

When I looked at what your daughter ate during the day, I did wonder whether she needed the cereal bar as well as the sandwiches? Also I think it's fine to give kids sugar but I'm sticking to once a week for my DD because I know from my experience that in my family sugar seems to be an addictive drug. For example I would find it hard to have just one biscuit.

I'm not trying to be critical, but swallow your pride at the school's letter and go see the dietician, you really have nothing to lose and who knows, he or she may have an idea which might make all the difference to all of you.

But you aren't a failure as a mum - of course not - if your child had asthma you wouldn't say you'd failed would you? This is just another health concern that needs to be addressed and then moved on from.

whomoved, I'm saddened to hear you worrying about your daughter being on the 98th centile when she's b/f and only eating a few solids. Honestly, please don't be concerned about weight, she's far too young to worry. Babies grow so fast in their first year - faster than they'll ever grow again - and they need all that energy. They take in what they need -if she was full, she'd refuse any more milk or food.

I can understand that your family history makes you very concerned about food, but please don't get things out of proportion.

You're absolutely NOT a failure .

My sister's second son got a bit chubby when he was around three. She'd basically been overfeeding him for his natural type - her first son is a skinny, always-on-the-move type with a naturally small appetite and as she had always had to ensure he was sufficiently fed, she carried on in the same vein with child no 2, not realising until he had put on weight that he was much more sedentary and naturally inclined to eat more than required.

My sister's big thing is ensuring her second son doesn't "drink" calories - so no juice, only water (still, sparkling, with ice or a slice of lemon or orange only) and eats three balanced meals a day and no snacks. He lost weight in about six months without realising and three years later is slim. A big build, but slim.

Edam, I'm not unduly paranoid, the HV just nags and nags. I am trying to give her the best start by bfing her and getting her into good eating habits. But I do think a lot of proclivity to obesity is genetic.

Well, the HV should be shot, unless dd is on the 2nd centile for height and 98th for weight or anything extreme. And even then it might just be a growth pattern thing.

Ha! HV has NEVER bothered to measure her height - but I happen to know her trousers come down to her knees only and her t shirts are all too short! So I think actually she's fine. She's adorable in any case.

Aren't HVs weird, btw, ds was usually on 75th, sometimes 98th and my HV always congratulated me (like it was anything I'd done!). No idea where he was on height as they didn't measure it regularly.

Oh FGS, so HV doesn't even know if she's in proportion? Woman should be cermonially stripped of her qualifications or something (which obviously don't include any training in infant nutrition).

I do wonder if there's some gender stereotyping involved in attitudes to babies, though, ds was a big boy (not extraordinary chubby but clearly 'gaining well' and a lot bigger than the girl babies we knew and this was always seen as a good thing. If he'd been a girl, I wonder if the attitude would have been different?

Ds is now nearly 4 and very tall for his age, btw, and very strong and muscular. But you can see his ribs. He's like his dad who is 6ft and built like a brick you-know-what (apart from the ribs).

My wish for parents is not to get too hung up on the % line.
My DD is 20 months old, and I refused to have her weighed for months because I was fed up (and worried) about the lectures I'd get about her %.

PLEASE don't worry about having podgy babies

both of mine were way at the top of those ridiculous centile scale charts, sometimes over it when they were weighed

they were both huge at birth so I put it down to that (9lb 10 and 9lb 5)

they are now 3stone, 3ft 9 and 2.4 stone 3ft 3, iirc quite low on the chart linked to earlier

Thanks everyone, some great advice & I do think that perhaps the cereal bars can be left out of the lunch box from now on.

The nurse's phone keeps ringing out & I have been trying it for half the day!

MIL picked dd up from school for me & when I went to pick her up MIL says "I asked XXXX if she wanted something to eat & she said no, she had her lunch at school...she wouldn't even have a bag of hula hoops!"

I then waited until dh had taken dd into the car & told MIL about the letter & that I was following it up. She rounded on me & said I would give dd a complex & that there was nothing wrong with her, that she thought dd was perfect & it was my problem if I didn't. She totally didn't get where I was coming from... She said "sure how can she be fat, you only give her damned rabbit food, the child asked me last week what a bar of dairymilk was" [It was a flippin' massive bar that's why..dd had never saw anything like it in her life!]

whomovedmychocolate, agree with edam...hv is potty. Fat babies are a totally different thing than overweight children. Once babies start eating solids and walking they completely change their shape. My children (and me) were the fattest babies in the world, but started to thin out as soon as we had solids and started crawling and walking.

fff2, I'm sorry if I sounded so harsh before. I'm a little riled up on the subject at the moment...my next door neighbor's child who is 5, is grossly overweight, bordering on obese and it just pains me to see it. Her father (who has her most of the time) keeps going on about how he feeds her healthy food, but she spends a lot of time at ours and I see that really her problem isn't what she eats so much as how much. Where my kids will have one whatever, she will have 2 or 3 or even more if I let her. Even more ridiculous is that the father is obsessively protective with her and won't let her do things like play with water on a slightly chilly day (we're in los angeles, so we're talking 75 degrees) because she might catch a cold (!)...never mind the diabetes that she's going to get from her obesity.

I feel quite strongly that portion control (combined with healthy food) is the secret to long term weight control. If you are trying to lose weight yourself, you might want to try it as a family wide initiative. Just try to reduce by a little, everything that all of you eat and see how you all look in a month. I bet that even if you just eliminate the extra scoop, the cereal bar (and how about 3/4 of a sandwich) your dd will be noticeably thinner in a month.

As a bit of an aside....My father is a well known scientist who works on nutrition and causes of cancer. One of his current theories is that obesity (not suggesting that this is the case in your household) is caused by malnutrition. That people who eat nothing but junk food tend to be obese because their body keeps telling them they are hungry because it's not getting the nutrients it needs and so they keep eating, but because they are eating junk, their body never tells them to stop.

Oh fff2, I just read your last post...you poor thing. Your MIL really isn't being helpful, especially considering her track record. There is absolutely no reason to give your dd a complex. In fact you really dont need to discuss it with her at all in terms of her body. Talk about healthy food with her on an educational level (which it soudns like you do anyway) and reduce her portions without even discussing it with her. And ignore MIL.

FF2 - I think "no thank you, I've had lunch" is an amazingly mature, sensible, healthy approach to an offer of an unecessary snack. I'd say three cheers for your daughter. You and she are obviously on the right track.

What you need like a kick in the teeth is bumping into your MIL when you have any problem at all going. Geez

My GP recommended not giving dd any fruit juice at all, to try and steer her towards drinking water only. It does make quite a difference I think.

SA I read that too, that often obese people are at the same time malnourished. A real vicious circle if ever there was one. eat crap - no nutrients - body craves nutrients, ie more food - eat more crap - crave more etc etc

Where do you find a good guide to portions? I read that the protein portion for an adult should roughly be size of palm. But carb/ veg portion?

My ds was the fattest baby ever. Just a total bunter.