Breast fed/Formula fed - what do the charts really reflect?

[Shortninbread]

Hi,
My 4 month old is exclusively breastfed and had been putting on weight just tracking below 25th centile up til 3 months. In the past month she is down to 2nd centile. She still seems alert, has always been strong from quite early on, sleeps well, but has been super irritable and crying a lot over the past couple of weeks and is on and off the breast. She hasn't lost weight but hasn't gained any in the past fortnight. I suspect teething, but surely this wouldn't affect a baby being able to put on weight? HV said not to worry and leave it a month before next weigh in and was very reassuring about milk supply not being the issue, and to try feeding little and often due to soreness from teething. A lot of people comment on how small she is for her age. Are the weight charts skewed towards formula fed babies? My instincts are all over the shop on this one and I am so close to getting formula, even though I really wanted to go six months efb. Anyone in the same boat? Any thoughts welcome! Thanks.

they reflect statistics.

a child on the 25th centile is heavier than about 24% of children that age of all heights. At 4 months its hard to tell how old a baby is and they come in SUCH a range of sizes some are long, some short, some pudgy some skinny. The long and pudgy ones look about 6months old, a long and skinny one looks scrawny, a short one may not look 4 months yet.

Your HV sounds pretty sensible. A watching brief won't hurt, keep on offering her your milk and when she wants it I expect she will feed. she won't suddenly grow taller what ever you feed her.

best of luck and keep it up .

yes, the weight charts are based on formula fed babies. you can access the breastfed baby charts online, i don't have a link to hand though

most breastfed babies tend to gain quite quickly, and then plateau, which it sounds like your daughter has.

and, for once, it sounds like you have a great health visitor!!

I know that the "milk only for 6 months thing" is fashionable now. But from my experience when my do's got hungry at 4 months or so
I didn't' give formula I gave baby rice mixed with breast milk and this satisfied them and helped sleep etc.
They get a lot goodness from bf. you're doing really well Good Luck.
Also doctors think that it protects the mum from breast cancer the longer you manage it!!

My HV pulled the standard charts out and put the WHO charts into my daughter's red book. Even against those, she's gone right down from 50th to the 2nd centile. Her sisters did the same, 14 and 12 years ago, with charts based on different studies. DD1 was on or around the 3rd, DD2 was right down on the 0.4th on hers, although they have all three been much the same size at much the same age.

oh and btw, is she teething? The irritability and pulling off the breast may be caused by that.

Forgot to say all three daughters perfectly healthy (see pic of them on my profile). The baby is just 6 months and weighs under 6kg still.

Many thanks all. Hugely informative and reassuring. Duchesse, thanks. I think my DD will probably be under 6kg at 6 months too. She is very likely teething at the mo.

Short- the advantage is that clothes last longer! She's barely into 3-6 m stuff and some of the 0-3 still fits. At least she'll get the wear out of things.

that's certainly an advantage to short babies. I had one who was long - not very long, but longer legged than baby grows allowed for, had to cut the feet out of baby grows or swamp him in next size up.
he still tall, and likely to be 6 ft plus when he's a man.

my DS is another exclusively breastfed little guy! He turned six months this week, and weighing at home with our scale he's about 6.7 kilograms. On the standard charts which were in the red book, he's around the 5th centile right now, and on the breastfed charts he's just a bit above that. Either way he's little, but healthy, happy and doing everything a 6 month old should.

You can get the WHO charts here.