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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Original poster

Wanting babies to jump centiles

76 replies

BeakyAndBun · 08/01/2016 16:45

I may well be alone in this but I am ebf my baby and most of the other new mums I've met are ff. It feels like they are competing to have the biggest baby and I feel like I am missing something. My baby is following his centile and thriving but he is long and lean. I know I shouldn't care but I just don't understand why they are all really proud when their babies jump centiles, and congratulate each other. Is this a common thing for mums to want their babies to pack on as much as possible? I feel happy when my son is following the curve as I know he is getting enough breast milk, but I don't get why you would celebrate a ff baby going above the curve. I'm just left scratching my head as to whether this is a 'thing' I'm not getting! They are lovely ladies, I just wondered if I am the unusual one, basically.

OP posts:
LibrariesGaveUsP0wer · 09/01/2016 10:26

Shan - that's natural and in proportion though.

TheCatsMeow · 09/01/2016 10:27

I think maybe the height matters here too. Mine is on the top one for height and 75th in weight. I'm tall his dad's about 6"3 so he was never going to be little

LittleBearPad · 09/01/2016 10:28

It's quite easy to overfeed a baby if you want to do it, especially if you start weaning early. Rusks in bottles still aren't completely unheard of.

Feeding on demand, not making them finish a bottle if they don't want it etc will not result in over feeding. Being determined they will have 8oz every four hours might.

Don't worry OP they'll be comparing crawling rates and how quickly they take to solids soon. Weight is more or less all they can compare at the moment. See if you can find some other extra mum friends. They may be more like you.

TheCatsMeow · 09/01/2016 10:29

Little how common is that though? Everyone who I know that ff does it on demand, I don't know anyone who says they have to have 8oz every four hours

LibrariesGaveUsP0wer · 09/01/2016 10:34

Maybe not. But it is far, far commoner than it should be to keep wiggling the bottle until the baby finishes it. Sadly.

TheCatsMeow · 09/01/2016 10:38

Libraries I can't imagine why anyone would do that. I do try a few times because he gets distracted and then is curious if I've taken it off him in that time Grin but once he's done he just won't have it. I don't know why you'd go to the effort and hassle of forcing them to finish a bottle, unless they're on a feeding schedule. Mine was for a while because he was a NICU baby and they wanted him fed every 3 hours and it was really hard

TheCatsMeow · 09/01/2016 10:38

Furious not curious

lornathewizzard · 09/01/2016 10:38

As you've acknowledged OP, you are overthinking this due to your relationship with the people you describe.
There is a perception that bigger babies are healthier, or maybe that smaller babies aren't as healthy. I know that I was happy my DD was high centile, or certainly less stressed than I would have been if she was small. Obv this isn't true for all babies and babies can be healthy in all sizes, or otherwise.
I also don't think these woman are necessarily bragging. It's just another mundane baby thing that most of us get caught up in.

LittleBearPad · 09/01/2016 10:40

But it does happen. Read the infant feeding boards or weaning or sleep boards about how grandparents/old fashioned hvs are advising how to bottle feed and the wonderfulness of a 'routine'.

And as Libraries says twisting the bottle isn't so uncommon.

Focusfocus · 09/01/2016 10:41

I'm part of a family where bigger is better and extremely praiseworthy so I know that bragging about size does happen

CestLaVie93 · 09/01/2016 10:42

My baby is ff and has jumped from 75th to 98th. I am a bit concerned as I have struggled with my weight since childhood so worry I'm making my baby fat. All these comments about obesity & fat babies really don't help. I'm not planning on early weaning, there are more calories in milk than puréed veg anyway.

When I'm at baby groups I say his age & laugh "I know he's massive" because I know people comment on it & I'm paranoid. But what am I supposed to do, starve him??

Sick of the bf/ff debates to be honest. We are mothers, doing our best. But maybe I'm still bitter at not being able to bf & feel like SOME bf mothers look down their noses at me when all I do is look at them with admiration... Sad

Gunting · 09/01/2016 10:46

It's weird to refer to a baby as obese Confused

AlanPacino · 09/01/2016 10:55

It's bizarre isn't it. Could you imagine adults saying. 'Wow. I've gone from the middle to the top of the BMI charts'. Some parents see the the centile number almost as a score out of 100 for their parenting prowess. In a room of 100 babies only 10 should be above the 90th centile but it seems some parents think they should all be. It's weird. It's a shame you can't avoid it with family.

Sometimesithinkimbonkers · 09/01/2016 10:56

Well I'm a failure!!'

DS1 is on the 9th, DS2 on the 0.4th and DD1 9th too.

All BF babies!

LittleBearPad · 09/01/2016 10:56

Seriously don't worry C'est. You do have to be determined to overfeed most babies. What's his length centile. Context is everything. DS is on the 9th centile for length, 25th for weight and 75th for head size Confused Grin but he looks in proportion to me.

Seriously the best way to avoid all this crap is, in the absence of any concerns, not to get them weighed. It's so freeing to say 'I don't know' when asked what they weigh.

Shantotto · 09/01/2016 10:57

Cestlavie I agree - it's so difficult when you couldn't BF. Every message I see about him I'm not doing the best for maybe is painful. Flowers

Some HVs have been a bit 'Ooh we better keep an eye on his weight! He's so big!' And another will say 'He'll go right off the charts but don't worry about it, they don't work for tall babies.'

Well which is it? I'm already anxious about how much formula he has.

It just feels like another stick to beat people who can't breastfeed with. When a BF baby is all plump and big it's all 'How wonderful! I'm so amazing I made my baby so big through my own milk.'

Focusfocus · 09/01/2016 11:04

What a fantastic trap we are in hey -

If BF baby is big FF mums may feel their baby being big is not genuine enough

If BF baby is small BF mum may feel under pressure that her milk isn't enough

If FF baby is big FF mums may feel they are over feeding and BF mum may feel they aren't feeding enough

If FF baby is small FF mum will feel people may raise eyebrows

No mum whether BF or FF can ever truly win I guess...

Original poster
BeakyAndBun · 09/01/2016 11:06

Gunting- I can't speak for anyone else but when I said "obesity isn't a good thing" I didn't mean that babies are obese, but that if babies are being given solids very young, made to finish bottles etc in a conscious effort to feed them up and make them big, then their chances of being obese later is surely higher. If they are naturally larger than average that is fine, but if they are deliberately fed up then they will surely be bigger than nature intended them to be.

OP posts:
Original poster
BeakyAndBun · 09/01/2016 11:39

Also, to those saying they feel bad ff, I get judged for bf as well; my MIL is convinced my son should be ff and we have had pressure there, and I have had my elderly relatives saying he needs a bottle because he "feeds too much." Everyone likes to stick their oar in! I guess we all just have to do what works for our families and try to ignore the outside pressures! It's hard though when all you want is to do the best for your family and people make you feel like your choices aren't the right ones.

OP posts:
TheCatsMeow · 09/01/2016 11:52

Even if a baby is overfed which is difficult to do I don't see how that would correlate to obesity. They're not going to force feed a child.

MiaowTheCat · 09/01/2016 12:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

JasperDamerel · 09/01/2016 12:22

DD was exclusively breastfed for 6 months, and almost exclusively breastfed for another 3 months after that as she was slow to take to solids. She went from the 25th centime to the 98th centime, and looked very fat. She slimmed down again when she was a toddler, and is now tall and slim. I wasn't particularly thrilled about the weight gain, but I wasn't concerned either.

AliensInUnderpants12 · 09/01/2016 15:10

There is no way you could over feed my two formula fed children. When they have finished they stop drinking the milk and push the bottle out with their tongues. I think some babies just get chubbier than others, I really don't think that parents are "over feeding" their babies! My two are both long and slim for the record.

NeitherQuietNorCalm · 09/01/2016 15:16

My FF baby is on 25th, was on 9th for a while. He does seem small next to some babies I see but it's just his body shape, he's tall and slim like his dad.

PainAuChocolat23 · 09/01/2016 23:56

My 6.5 month ds is ebf as well as on some solids now and is losing weight Sad he has lost 12oz in 3 weeks and prior to that had only put 4oz on in 2 months. If he hasnt had sufficent gain next time he is getting referred to the hospital paediatrician im so scared about that