Just been to HV and a little shaken, Tiktok or others, any advice?

[cazee]

I have not had my baby weighed for ages, and I was worried to see that she has fallen from the 50th ish percentile to the 9th. She is nearly 9 months, and is not really interested in solids. She is BF. I was told that she is having too much milk, and that I must increase her solids intake. I am really upset at the moment, and a little worried about why she is so light. She doesn't look that light to me, and she is happy and active. Before I went to weigh her I was not at all worried.
I felt that they thought I was negligent for not pushing solids, and was hoping for some advice. Should I cut back on the BF to encourage her to eat more solids?
Be gentle with me, I am a bit tearful after all this.

Yomell did you give your lo other fluids as well as bf when weaning, as constipation is usually due to lack of fibre, fruit and veg and fluids or too much protein in their diet. Also the muscle action of the gut needs to mature, this does not happen whilst a baby is exclusively on milk because peristaltic action doesn't need to be as strong to push fluids through the intestine.

Definately wean fully on finger foods of fruit and veg and give extra fluid with meals as this will help to prevent constipation. Give cereals for breakfast for fibre as this will also help.

Cazee, sorry your hv is making you worry
My ds1 is 9.5 months old although I actually introduced solids at 5.5 months he is still mainly b/f. I always offer breast 1st, when he wakes up then breakfast a bit later, breast whenever he wants midmorning, sometimes he will have lunch other times he wil throw it all over the dog . Breast whenever in the afternoon. Bits off our plates at dinner and the breast in the evening (and in the night!)
If he is getting some solids, trying new foods even if he is taking a bite and then throwing it! He will be fine

hi tori32 I have no idea what your speciality is and your info about speech development may be perfectly true when applied to babies fed from a bottle, but I believe that the sucking action during breastfeeding is actually beneficial to developing the facial muscles and aids speech development

see for example this research paper:
Early weaning - implications to oral motor development

I believe www.kellymom.com has links to some articles about this as well

I certainly have an extremely vocal and articulate 3 year old who ate very little solid food at 9 or even 12 months old (although as he mostly preferred finger foods to what I call 'mush' he had plenty of opportunities to chew things).

I had real promblems with those charts, they are just averages and sometimes hv forget that, my 1st hv was very good and despite my ds1 dropping she just kept assuring me thay were averages (she hated the charts) and as long as he was putting on weight, not worry. she also told me (this is 5 yrs ago so could of changed) the charts are more realistic for bottlefed babies and she finds them quite irelevant for bf babies. Maybe try speaking to another hv and for a while getting her weighed reg to make sure she putting on weight. I was always told that if they putting on weight that the important thing not what line or if they change lines

My dd is 10months, born on 50th centile and has dropped as low as below 9th. She is just creeping back up to about the 25th but has been eating 3 meals a day since about 7 months so even if your dd was eating more her weight might not shoot up! As you haven't had her weighed for a while you might even find she's on the way up again. HVs seem to get far too focused on the charts. I think that as long as you are offering food your baby will do her own thing and her weight will do what is natural for her. Good luck.

Hi mummypig the facial muscles in bf and ff work antagonistically i.e. are not the same set of muscles, however, all the muscles are required for good speech development and these can only be strengthened by chewing food. Regardless of bf or ff.

Ps if you read para 41 of the link you gave me it says there about the chewing action and mandible muscle development.

She is getting lots of chewing practice as I offer her food in a very similar pattern to magnolia74, it is just that not much seems to actually get swallowed.

cazee, honsetly don't worry about it. She will eat what she wants, when she wants as long as it's being offered

You are giving her the calories needed via b/m and she is obviously happt to play around with food at the moment which is fine x

...And thankyou everyone who has shared a reassuring story, I really appreciate them

Sorry Cazee if I misunderstood the op but it read as though she wasn't getting that practice. If she is then obviously no problem.

But Magnolia, the HV are really scary when it is just you, them and a growth chart.

Yes they can be and it's awful that they are able to make you feel that way But you are her mother, you are perfectly capable of making the right decisions for her and you are doing everything right

I have a fantastic g.p and she weighs my ds1 for me as I refused to go to the hv when the made a mistake on his chart and tried to bully me into topping up. If weiging is the only reason you go to the clinic then pop her on home scales every so often to put you mind at rest that she isn't losing weight or take her to your g.p. But if she is happy, healthy, alert ect.... you really don't need to have her weighed.

tori32 will post a reply on a separate topic as I don't want to hijack cazee's thread

Ok mummypig, no probs. Where are you going to?

I had a similar incident with a so called HV when my DD was 4/5 months old.

The HV said how alert and well developed my daughter was and other nice things...weighted her and told me she need to be weaned that day onto solids...I went home in tears and there was no need my baby was just fine.

I think in your situation I would just stop having her weighted and if you see any of these idiots HV, nod cheerful at them and ignore their advice and if the advice is very bad report them.