almost 11months and only 17lb 10oz, please reassure me.

[misdee]

dd3 is teeny. she has dropped down to below the 9th percentile (burn the charts i know!). she eats loads, feeds loads, but doesnt gain much weight. i am scaring myself thinking there could be sopmething wrong with her, mainly heart problems, which i know can make the body use more calories, and with dh condition, well, you can guess at how worrying it is. i know i need to see the GP to get dd's all checked, but i dont want to, i just cant face the possibilities.

as you know misdee, my dd has noonan syndrome which involves a heart condition and then low weight gain
My dd was 13lbs at 11 mths so your dd has acres on her and my dd is fine being small.
Mebtin your worries to your doc, you know you gotta do it, the sooner you know either way, the sooner you'll be able to deal with something concrete.
it is a worry for you I know, you have so much on your plate misdee, sometimes I wonder how you manage and stay sane poppet.

mebtin = mention of course

she weighed 7lb 13oz at birth. so hasnt gained much. thnaks for the cpomparison tho, it does help.

hope dd is ok as can be.

my dd is fab, honestly
At 3.4yrs she is only 24lbs a pocket rocket
DD was 7lbs 8oz at birth she was on the 0.4 for the first 2 yrs and this last year she has crept up to the 2nd centile and even managed a month in the 9th!
There is a really good supplement called paediasure for over 12 mths - not suitable for dairy allergies though? I'm not sure if your dd is ok with dairy?

charts are based on 100 american bottle fed babbies, they are useless! my ds is 7mnth and 15 lb 11onz, and I know he's fine because he's crawling playing, sitting up and generally v well developed. his cousin who is on the 75th centil is same age and reluctant to of any of the above!! every bay is different, will weigh differantly and develop in there own time. you know your baby, trust your instinct about their size/development. When in doubt chat to your gp!
Hope this helps

hi misdee
my dd1 was 6.6 at birth (37+5)
at 9 months she was 16.9lbs.
after that I stopped taking her to the clinic! but I suspect she was about the same as your dd.
she is now nearly three and still teeny. it's just the way she is made. she used to eat loads (at a year she often used to have 3 weetabix for breakfast) and is extremely healthy and bright and scarcely ever ill. She is just petite and dainty and that's all there is to it.

At a year dd weighed 8.05kg 17lb 7ish, born at 3.15kg/6lb 13ish. Even now at 4 she is just under 13kg, less than 29lbs, but full of energy, healthy and bright. Remember 9 girls in 100 are dd3's size or smaller, not an insignificant number. I can understand your worries but had thought Peter's condition was virus induced not hereditary.

Could dd2 being the opposite in size and your current concerns about her, perhaps lead you to be over analytical about dd3 ?

misdee, iirc you are very small, and so is mieow, and Peter isn't tall ... so genetically she is very unlikely to be big anyway. (Where would you be on the centiles if you plotted yourself on the age 18 bit? I am under the 9th).Also, iirc, she is very active isn't she, always on the go, and from the pictures I have seen as well as being extremely cute she is not at all skinny.

Are there any other things you are worried about? Does she catch lots of viruses/bugs? Cough a lot? Look pale? Seem out of sorts a lot? If not, then it's probably just that she is small.

I still think you are right to go to the doctors to get their opinion, and I can truly understand why you just can't face it, but it may just help to put your mind at rest. ((((hugs))))

Hi misdee,

Does she seem okay otherwise - if so then I'd say she's just normal. Okay I know there can be undiscovered problems but if she's active and eating loads then I'd say she was just using the calories she's eating.
I am sure it must be hard for you to think that it's nothing - just your DD being normal but she honestly sounds fine. If no heart problems have been picked up then there's highly unlikely to have been anything develop. I know it must be hard to focus on this because of your DH. Go to the doctor - just for your own peace of mind. Your DD weight sounds fine - she's just a small baby and probably meant to be that way - anything above the 0.4th centile is a very respectable weight to be -and in any case - centile charts are useless. Much better to look at her as a whole - are you worried about any other area of her development - if not then I'd say she's likely to be fine.

Mandy

thanks girls, even tho they believe peters heart problem was caused by a virus they arent 100% certain as the test fo r the virus was inconclusive then there is the element of doubt. have been advised to get the girls scanned periodically, so far only dd2 has had an echo as she has a murmur.

dd3 is my smallest baby ever. just checked dd1 record and at a similar age she was only 20lbs. (wont get into dd2 weight at that age, errrr 32lb ish lol), so i guess my girls will all be different. mine you look at me and mieow, she is teeny, i am a lot taller, and dh is over 6ft (admittingly only weighs 10stone atm, but is usually 13stone).

will apprictae the length of time dd3 will stay in her clothes for.

misdee - is you baby breastfed ?

If so, the NHS charts are rubbish. They are based on averages for a mixture of bottle-fed and bf babies.

For babies who have been breastfed for at least a year, see the weight charts on kellymom.com

The average for a bf baby at 12 months is:
2.5 x birth weight

My quick calculation for you is this:
7lbs 13oz x 2.5 = 19lbs 8oz

So your baby is very much on target for 11 months. If she gains another 2 lbs or so in the next few weeks, she will be spot on !

My exclusiveley bf son was 3.09 kiols at birth, only 8.1 kilos at 12 months and is only 10 kilos now at 19 months (still breastfed).

He is short and has a small frame, but has the most beautiful round face and chubby red cheeks !

Good luck.

Hey Misdee,
Glad you're feeling better about her weight. Tilly is teeny but stopped plotting her on the charts long ago. I know that her cousin at 7 months has nearly caught up on the clothes sizes so there goes my hand me down route!!
Personally I like little 'uns - Tilly's friend is HUGE and I can't even pick her up for a cuddle now i'm preggers!

Misdee my twins are now 2 yrs old and twin 2 is only 20lb 2oz

Try not to worry too much about it but if you are overly concerned get her checked over by hv/doctor

Misdee, the Kelly mom site also has some really good stuff about other factors that are more important than weight gain when you're determining whether your LO is healthy. For the last 8 weeks or so DS has been only gaining 1 to 1 1/2 oz a week - low even by BF standards - and is now below the 9th centile. But he's alert, bright, very active, hitting his little milestones, very happy. So I stopped having him weighed. Which sounds drastic, but I found it so much less stressful to look at him in the round, rather than getting worked up every fortnight about his inadequate weight gain. I can understand you needing to get medical reassurance about your LO, but once you've got it, I really would recommend ditching the scales!

My DS has always been between 2nd and 9th centile for both height and weight on the NHS charts, but much further up on the UNICEF chart which is for bf babies.

I recently took him to a consultant paeditrician (I have a paranoid DH who thinks DS has bow-shaped legs, which MNers have all said is pretty normal for a toddler) and discussed height and weight with her. Any way, she said DS was perfectly proportioned and looked very active and alert, which is what matters. She said she would have worried if he had been very short and very fat at the same time !!

I once mentioned the NHS charts to my HV and said that they were out of date. She sort of smirked and said something like "No, the NHS would NEVER hand out out of date charts !", yeh.....right, I thought !!

my dd2 was one 2 weeks ago
I had her weighed last week and she is 17.4 pounds
little but fine
we went to the paed at hospital until she was discharged at 11 months - she had monthly weighins, etc etc, bloodtests all sorts of things
she has been on 2nd centile for months now and will prob stay there
on bright side I won't have to buy clothes very ofter for her ( although she gts all of dd1's odl ones!)
I'm sure she is fine

misdee - she sounds about the same as dd2. Dd2 was on the 97th percentile for birth and now is near the 5th percentile... The GP was a bit concerned said we needed to rule out caeliac (?) disease.. which we did. At 14months old she now weighs just 8 1/2kgs about 18lbs or so I guess.

I know she is incredibly active, happy, reaching milestones etc... so I am not worried. I jsut have her weighed when we go for vaccinations at the GP - have never ever taken her to clinic.

Since they discovered dh's heart condition, we have been told that there is a chance that children can inherit it... but we were told to wait until dd2 was around 6 or 7 before checking it out. He has a congenital condition which was not discovered until he was 43!!! Go figure....

I figure dd2 takes after dh's family - his mum and sister are average height petite build.... although both dh and his sister were whopper babes..... both over 9lb. Me I was just over 6lb.

BUT I agree with piffle about getting them checked out - I know you say you can't face the possibilities and I can appreciate that with facing dd1's heart defect etc... but you know it is important to get it sorted. I am sure it all will be fine and that will be something you can check off your list and stop worrying about!!

How long is she? I'm always amazed that they weigh babies and don't measure their height much after a while. Surely if height and weight are in proportion she is fine. Also percentiles give the ends of 'normal' so even if she is on the 9th percentile she is normal - someone has to be at the top or lower end. Has she dropped off a lot or has she always been around the same percentile give or take?

My ds is 14 months and weighs about 21lbs. He is 9th percentile for weight (and always has been except when born he was 7.7lbs but dropped to 9th at 2 weeks and stayed there) and 75th for height.

He also eats loads and most of my friends can't believe what he eats. I get loads of 'where does he put it?' sort of comments. I would definitley get her checked out is you are worried though. It will almost certainly put your mind at rest.

DD2 wasn't that big at that age.
She is still quite a titch now, but eats like a horse.

It could just be her - got a friend who's little one is like a father compared to my DS2. REALLY light, still breastfed (at 20 months) but eats well and is really happy little thing.

My two are the complete opposite, one bottlefed, one breastfed both followed the charts to the line (well apart from DS2's 26places jump up the centiles at 2 weeks old) so I'm on the other end.