Bottle fed baby dropping centiles

[Goingcrazy888]

My DS was born on the 91st centile and since birth has steadily dropped down although has been gaining weight. He is 91st centile for length. At 12 weeks he weighs 13lb 3oz, was 9lb 6oz at birth, this puts him between the 25th and 50th centile, he has only gained 11oz since he was last weighed 4 weeks ago.

Feeding wise he was BF for the first week then mixed fed after that until a couple of weeks a go. He then developed a bottle preference and got very distressed with BF hence switching fully to bottle feeding in last two weeks. He is having mainly bottles of formula but also a bottle or two of breastmilk from my massive freezer stash.

When I had him weighed yesterday the HV said that normally they would refer a baby (to a pead??) who has dropped so many centiles. But with DS she thinks I just did a very good job of growing him antenatally and he is just settling down to his true centile. Neither DH or I are very big and his big sister was born on 50th but dropped to 25th and has stayed there. So I can see her point. We need to get him weighed again in two weeks rather than a month, if he has dropped another centile she says we will have to rethink.

He is very alert and active, plenty of wet nappies, dirty one every other day. But I can't get the niggling thoughts our of my head that 11oz in 4 weeks seems a tiny amount and that is very big discrepancy between length and weight centiles.

Feeding wise he has around 7 bottles a day anywhere between 3-5o which doesn't seem that much for his age?

You've done the right thing, discussing it with the HV. A fall in centiles is a sign to check out what's going on, and to see if there is any underlying reason why the baby is not staying on the original line....and that is what the HV has done. She's drawn a blank - your baby is developing well and is happy and active, and you are clearly not doing anything daft with the feeding (such as only feeding him to a rigid schedule, or giving him water instead of milk....that sort of thing). In addition, there is often a period of 'catch down' growth with babies on the higher centiles. Plus he is gaining weight, not losing it.

The trouble with centile charts is that even with all these caveats and careful monitoring, parents (and HCPs) can still become worried about progress on the charts, probably because it's there in black and white, and it therefore assumes more importance than the actual essentials, which are 'is this baby developing well? is this baby healthy? is this baby growing? is this baby feeding ok?'. Length is actually quite difficult to measure accurately in babies, too.

Sounds to me that the advice to keep an eye on things is absolutely justified, and if there is still concern, then you can prob discuss increasing his milk with the HV (prob by giving more bottles).

Hope things go well.