HV says my EBF baby is overweight, is this possible?

[Jennyrosity]

Had her weighed today and at almost 14 weeks she's 8.5k (18.7lb), which apparently puts her off the normal scale. She's demand-fed and has only ever had breast milk, apart from a couple of formula feeds when she was less than a week old and we were struggling to get bf established. Since then we had - I thought - been doing really well. She slept through from about 8 weeks and at her 6 week check (at which she was 6k - she was 4.5 at birth) my doctor commented on how well we both seemed to be doing - she even expressed surprise that she's my first, as I seemed "too calm and confident" to be a first time mum.

But the HV has really shaken that confidence. She says I'm overfeeding her and should only feed every 3 hours. I have been demand feeding and sometimes she more often than that, sometimes not, and the amount she takes at each feed often varies, which I'd assumed was normal - I don't have the same appetite every time I eat, after all.

Should I be worried? My husband is deeply worried that she'll end up obese, and of course I feel responsible because I'm the one feeding her! But I look at my happy, contented baby and find it hard to believe she's anything less than perfect.

One of my DSs was a right fat b**d as a baby. Everybody was amazed he was mine as I am so petite. He is skinny now - muscular and sporty but not a pick of excess fat. He still eats like a horse but burns it all off. Don't worry :)

The more I think about the HV's comments the more annoyed I get. She was just so bloody patronising - the main reason we'd gone to see her was because DD has been having sudden screaming fits for the past two weeks and I wanted to check there was nothing wrong with her - I'm perfectly prepared to put in the hard work if it's just a phase and she'll grow out of it, but would hate to think she was in pain for some reason and I'd ignored it. Her response was to tell me that babies cry to communicate things, and I needed to make sure that she wasn't hungry or wet or needing a nap...

Really??! Is that right?! So I'm NOT supposed to leave her starving and sleepless in dirty nappies then?! Well gosh darn it, thank god you were here to tell me because after 3 months I hadn't worked that out myself!

I'm about as confident a person as it's possible to be, and she still made me feel like crap, so god knows how she's making other women feel.

Think I will take DD to see the GP and get her opinion. Hopefully it will help reassure DH - he is worrying himself sick over it, and it's making it harder for me to just follow my instincts and carry on as we were.

Jenny, if she is any good at her job at all, she should want to know if she has made you feel this way, and work out what to do to change her approach (and to apologise to you, as well, I think).

You say you are normally confident, so with a bit of thought, can you work out a way to explain to her politely and calmly that whatever her (strange) thoughts about breastfeeding, and whatever her (incorrect) understanding of how it works, undermining you and making you feel bad is not a way to support mothers and babies.

Go for it :)

Another vote for ignoring the HV here, too. This is why DC3 has been to weighing clinic twice since she was born in October....!

Could the screaming be teeth? My DD has done this quite a bit recently and now has 3 lovely teeth... it is quite a sudden scream that just sounds like she's in pain IYSWIM.

My EBF baby was as fat as can be. He really was Michelin man like.

My Hv constantly told me he was fine.

He is now, of course, very slinky which is hard to believe as he was such a butter ball.

Ds started teething at 3months although the first tooth didn't appear until 6mo, so it could easily be that.

What silly advice - on the one hand that your baby might be crying to communicate and that you shouldn't be leaving them hungry or in a wet nappy and on the other hand suggesting you're overfeeding.

My midwife gave me a pre-eclampsia leaflet and told me to read it because she 'thought I'd be ringing her with the symptoms in the next week or two' so there are some thoughtless healthcare professionals out there.

If she was 4.5kg at birth, surely you'd expect her to be off the normal scale if she has carried on growing at the same rate? You don't mention the HV measuring her height/length - I'm sure if she had, she would probably also be 'over-tall' as well as 'over-weight', ie completely in proportion.

My DCs were both over 4kg at birth, were breast-fed and very chunky as babies, and have carried on at something like the 98th percentile for both height and weight since then.

Some HVs seem to think the 'average' line is something to aim for, rather than a statistic.

HVs get very little training or education about breastfeeding unless they are particularly interested and look into it themselves. Many also do not engage in continuing professional development - something that is a requirement for every other flipping health professional (at least, they weren't a couple of years ago when I looked into this, maybe something has changed since). Their union, the CPHVA, told me this was because PCTs weren't giving them any protected time for training. I actually had to give a national award to a bunch of HVs who had the bright idea of having a lunch time meeting once a month to go through the journals and latest research. Well done them but astonishing that this was so unusual it was deserving of an award, fgs.

That's a very long-winded way of saying some HVs know very little about b/f but it doesn't stop them acting as if they were experts. Most of them aren't.

The weight will fall off once your baby starts crawling.

My exclusively bf son was such a chubby little one up till 6 months. Now (at 5) he is slim as a whippet.