Dropping centiles

[JADS]

Argh, I am wrapping myself up in knots. With Ds1, I had a terrible time trying to feed him. He was born on the 50th centile but his weight gain was very slow and he dropped to below the 0.4th centile. Weaning into solids made everything worse. It took until his 3rd birthday to get his eating and weight sorted. It was very stressful.

Ds2 has up until now been a different kettle of fish. He took to bf like a pro and has developed his own routine which like his brother involved uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours early on. He is now 12 weeks and has dropped from the 91st to 50th centile. He does plenty of wees and a poo a day. He is happy in himself, cooing and smiling. Length wise he is in 6-9 month clothes.

The HV seemed unconcerned and said to re weigh in 4 weeks. I'm not sure what else to do except offer more feeds. Do I need to wake him up at night? He's a bottle refuser as well.

HV won't be concerned because he has started on a very high centile, If you want to offer more then do but they will not be concerned as he could just be having a growth spurt! If it helps my dd was off the chart for height and weight when born and by 5 months had settled happily on the 91st for height and the 50th for weight and that is were she stayed.

Sounds like catch down growth - very common in those bruisers who start off at the top of the chart! As ever it's far more important to gauge and assess the 'whole ' baby which is what it appears your sensible Hv is doing :)

I have a long thin baby who is in rude health too! hv similarly unconcerned about her.

I was told the fact she eats well (yes they watched us!) and is growing longer and longer shows she is eating enough (otherwise how would she grow?).

She's 4 and a half months now and to my eye looks chubbier! So who knows maybe she will fill out.

Anyway, my HV were very supportive of not worrying and if she needs "extra" calories we can look at that after 24 weeks when she starts to wean.

I guess I'm concerned about the downward trajectory now as once we weaned ds1 onto solids, it got worse. We did blw (although eventually went down the puree route). He ate very little but also seemed to plateau with his milk feeds - he never took more than 5oz at a time.

Ds1 also has some significant LDs and his feeding was just the start of this. As I said, Ds2 is totally different to Ds1 in many ways. I just have a lot of anxiety around this.

Thanks all. Realistically neither I nor his dad are tall so a big baby was a shock . It would make sense that the 50th centile is where he belongs

I was told this is why I should only wean "with care" at 6 months ... as I guess they want to ensure baby eats protein alongside milk. I'm going to ask the hv and gp what foods are best for "concentrated" protein and good fats and use them with veg as soon as I can.
But my dd is a hungry girl so FX will take food and milk!

You may find the opposite with solids this time, OP. My DS1 dropped from 75th to 25th percentile while EBF, but was a good eater and moved up a bit when he started on solids. He's now a tall, skinny, active, healthy 9yo.

Try not to stress

My dd was like this born on the 91st centile and dropped over 3 months to in between 25/50th centile.

I was referred to alder hey as the hv's were concerned. We saw 2 consultant paediatricians both told me she was finding her own natural genetic weight. They informed me that birth weight and genetic weight are 2 different things. As tiktok says it's most likely catch down weight.

I was stressed about it for months but now realise I had no reason to be as weren't the proper professionals.

Oh and my dd was also a bottle refuser. Finally at 6.5 months we cracked the bottle feeding using mam silk teat type bottles. It took me to leave over night and daddy finally cracked it. He persevered so much with him, hats off to my dp.