Adopted ff 11 mo overweight - advice please

[JaneDonne]

I'm adopting an 11 mo girl and at the moment she is 50th centile for height and 90 something for weight. She's clearly too big. I'm concerned as I know v little about FF. I have an older BDS but he was ebf.

The HV advice has been to cut down on milk and to feed her newborn formula but this seems wrong to me, she's clearly more keen on the bottle than her food and surely until 1 food is for fun? She also won't eat anything with lumps but that may be a different thread.

Any advice?

TIA

formula milks are split into;

Stage 1 - first milk suitable for the whole of the first year (mainly whey based)
Stage 2 - hungry milk (mainly casein based - supposedly for hungry babies)
Stage 3 - follow on milk (only suitable from 6 months but not really required)
Stage 4+ - toddler milks (not needed as you can give cows milk from age 1)

The hungry milk/follow on milks dont do any harm but dont have to be used as first milk is fine up to 1 year.

If it was me, I would keep the type and amount of milk exactly the same - whatever brand and stage of milk she is used to. Trying to breastfeed a bottle-fed 1 year old seems crazy to me tbh.

In the long term, over the next year you can switch to full fat cow's milk - they need around 12oz a day up to the age of 2.

Adoptive mother with 5 kids and a child development professional dayshift so have some experience.
IMO (which the op can ignore if she wants) it is not a good idea to mess about with food. We no nothing about this child's background a Nd why she came into care.
One certainty is that she will have experienced deep trauma. The advice is not to make changes I food for some time.
Op can try adoption uk forum for more advice.

Ilovepowerhoop that's really helpful thanks :) I have no idea how to even make up a bottle!

What about night feeds at this age? Can you leave it standing from the evening?

Thanks for all the flowers too :)

jane she might have had a pretty sedentary routine up till now. She will lose weight naturally as she starts moving and doing more.

How exciting for you!

If she still has night feeds the easiest thing to do is use ready to feed formula that you can just warm. Alternatively make up a bottle before you go to bed, cool it and store in the fridge to warm when the baby wakes.

Instructions for making bottles are on the side of the carton, don't worry! Or there is info on the NHS website.

Don't worry. I'm looking at this in the context of solid PACE parenting and not changing anything until she's ready :) Just posting now as it's on my mind and good to have a strategy.

I found cartons a godsend. Particularly if your DD takes a while to settle and her feeding routine is a bit out of whack.
Less waste and you can have a feed ready in seconds.

You can get litre bottles for the fridge too that last 48 hours once opened. It is more expensive than powdered (£2.90-£3.50 depending on the brand) but so much easier.

How close to 12mo is she you could just get her on cows milk and avoid the formula confusion.

I wouldn't worry my lo is 98th weight and height he used to be a right bloater but as gets more active it evens out

Thanks Devere :) Who are you muzzling? :)

I think she has been stuck on the house and not doing much and we are 'do lots' types so when she's ready hopefully it'll come off. I thought 50th - 90 something was quite big so I'm cheered to find it may not be...

I thought they didn't measure length (because it isn't accurate) till 2?

I'd also go with cows milk if she's nearly 12 months old.

My DD was really chunky at that age. She LOVED her milk and resisted weaning a bit. As lots have said, as soon as she started moving and as she grew she evened out. She's slimmer than her sister now and noone would look at her and think she was anything other than 'normal' weight.

Yep 50-90 all within normal range so don't worry too much. And as others have said, babies tend to chub up towards the end of the first year and then they slim out again as they learn how to crawl, walk and run!

I have no experience regarding FF or BF but I did adopt two 11 month old babies and you absolutely shouldn't make any drastic changes with regards to food until the child is settled. Once they are settled you can start to gradually make slight changes.

My DD was a chubby little thing at 11 months but as soon as she started walking the weight dropped off ( she's 6 now and if anything she is too skinny!)

PS having adopted two very much smaller babies please could posters hold off on saying how fabulous and possible BF an adopted child is?
The only people I know of who have given their AC anything like a serious amount of nutrition have taken lots of risky/off label drugs. Most give far more formula than breast milk, and at this age having always used a bottle she'd be very unlikely to take to the breast.

I know of a couple of Muslim adopters who've done a ritual few mouthfuls through pumping and herbs.

It seems like a bit of a stealth way to make adopters feel guilty if they don't try it. Kindly meant I'm sure, though.

Ukip apparently...must change back to my old name

You probably know that some LAC spend a lot of time in buggies and car seats if they have lots of contacts. Contacts can be pretty restricted movement-wise too.
Could be all kinds of reasons why she is onthebig side.

Good to have some strategies planned in advance though.

How lovely for you

Massive congratulations to you, exciting times ahead.
I'd echo what others have said-don't change anything at all for a couple of monttns at least. attachment is the mostimportant thing at first and its great that your baby .... YOUR BABY!!!.....is still taking bottles because the eye contact in bottle feeding is so good for attachment. My dd came from an institution and I tried everything to get her to take a bottle to no avail. She'll probably lose loads of weight when she walks.

As I said - the process is slow - make up a 7oz feed instead of an 8oz for example... As slow as at one feed for a week then 2 feeds, etc if needs be. Look at the feeds - as the process goes on then start to cut out the feed they are less interested in then offer water in a beaker instead.

With any baby it's slow and you can slow it right down.

I appreciate what is being said about attachment, studied the theory and had some experiences but I have not adopted so I was not trying to offer that experience. My background is public health though and currently doing work on childhood obesity - I have done a lot of stuff around infant feeding - it's very emotive at the best of times. Have seen parents feed their babies in many ways that are not mainstream - I wasn't trying to pressure when I said about breast feeding just saying I had seen that work too.

I hope everything goes well - apologies if I caused any offence.

I'm not offended :) I do appreciate how emotive feeding can be. I actually thought this was one thread with zero chance of getting into a FF/bf thing. I shoulda known.

Carry on muzzling UKIP definitely - that sounds like an excellent idea.

If she's 11m, she can go onto cows milk in a month anyway? Relactating for such an "old" baby seems bizarre, I cannot imagine how an 11mo could learn any sort of latch anyway. I stooped feeding ds at 13m and he forgot how to latch in days, having fed all that time!

Anyway I would not be too concerned about the weight immediately because babies do chub up then grow and thin out. Unless there is an underlying medical issue, you feeding her the recommended amount of age appropriate formula and healthy solid food should result in her weight heading the right way. If not, then you need to seek medical advice.