Hv says I've got to fatten ds3 up and should bf him less and give him cream cheese sandwiches!

[KITTYmaspudding]

Ok, here's the story, ds3 -child number 6- is nearly 9 months old. He has always been a skinny racing snake of a child. He was born @ 8lb 4oz, but skinny, looked like a skinned rabbit!!!!

He has always been a real boob boy, will 'snack' all day given the chance. He is also the most clingy and whiney child I have ever come across.

So today the HV weighs him and he has dropped from 75th at birth to 9th. This does not surprise me as he's not a greedy child. He has also not grown in height, but I know height measurements are very inaccurate for babies and I'm not too bothered.

Hv (who is very nice btw) says this is a point of concern and he needs to be up to the 50th centile. She says I should only be giving him three bf a day and that I should be giving him high calorie solids like cheese, butter etc.
Now having already gone through 5 children and their weaning habits my instinct is to say that ds3 is just a skinny active child and to leave things be.
Anyway how on earth do you force a child to eat? I've just tried giving him cheese and he spat it out. When he doesn't want to eat he won't.

My instinct is also to say that it'll be alright in the end, if he's meant to be skinny then he will be. Alright he's a grotbag but he's otherwise healthy and active.
His next sister up is just 2 and is very big and tall because she is. I haven't 'made her that way have I?
Anyway, your thoughts gratefully received.
Can I or indeed should do anything regarding this?

tulip >>>> After 6 months the breast milk is no longer sufficent to give full nutrition to an infant and must be supplemented with 'real' food.

She'd be whipped VVVVVVVVQV and force fed cheese spread sandwiches.

I think we can feeel pretty safe in suggesting the OP ignores tulip's advice!

I'd be interested in knowing where she gets her info from, though....especially the bit about the legal obligation to flag up as 'failure to thrive' all those babies who are below the 40th centile at 6 mths!! To whom is she flagging them up - social services? The police? The department of health?

Nestle.

oh no! have checked DDs red book. she was below the 40th centile, still is

seriously, breast milk is designed to nourish babies. not for 6 months and then no more.

i have just started reading 'the politics of breastfeeding', there is a little bit that really stuck in my mind, to paraphrase:

can you imagine if a company managed to make this magical liquid, that was different for each person, and nourished each different baby according to their needs, was on tap 24 hours a day, was the right temperature, the right composition and perfectly nutritionally balanced? they would be flogging it for millions.. and women make it for free !

lol@ nestle

d s3 is given bits of food all day. I'm afraid my answer to grotbag children, all of mine is to offer snacks or send them to bed .

Dp has just said he thinks there is something perhaps wrong with ds3. I said to him (after having been so wonderfully supported and boosted by you lot) that ds3 was not going to starve himself and he would eat as much as he needed.

He is constantly offered bits of sandwich, biscuit etc and with umpteen children around there is a constant supply of lost food on the floor all ready to be hoovered up by a passing infant .

Surely force- feeding a healthy child is going to interupt its ability to listen to its body and its ability to gauge true hunger and surely that would increase the likelihood of obesity and eating confusion later in life?

Oh no - ds1 has ALWAYS been (well last time I looked) around the 25th centile, so he has been breaking the law for the last 2 and half years. Mind you, he's doing well on it (sorry tulip)

"He is constantly offered bits of sandwich, biscuit etc and with umpteen children around there is a constant supply of lost food on the floor all ready to be hoovered up by a passing infant grin"

he is probably having the equivalent of a 3 course meal 3 times a day without you realising it !!!

if children are hungry , they eat. no child ever starved themselves.

I have this with DD, and i have found that lowering my expectations of what i thikn she should eat and not comparing her with DS who hoovered up everything in sight, made it easier. She has always had a small appetite, and eats enough to remain healthy, active and happy. but tis a mother's lot in life to worry.. and nutrition is so emotive, no?

Kitty, your last sentence wrt force-feeding is spot on IMO.
I was one that used to make Dd eat all the food on her plate, fed her every four hours when she was still on milk etc etc, then I came on MN and someone told me how ridiculous it was to make a child ignore their. Thank Goodness!

As somewhat older children, my siblings and I were constantly hauled in by the school nurse, and quizzed about our eating habts - do you get hot dinners at home, do you grt fruit and veg etc... as we were all off the scale for skinnyness. Ok so, your DS is in the 9% of children who are that weight for their age. He'll either fill out or he won't. Providing he DOES eat, and maybe you cuold humour your HV and try upping the calroeis a little, and isn't sick, constantly ill etc... then don't worry. Trust your 5 baby instincts (nutter )

Vs, I was like that with ds1, he was my first and I was so anxious and worried and he was little and a poor eater. Now I find that i have no idea who has eaten what during the day. I could not tell you who had cleared their plate, who had eaten lunch, or indeed breakfast !!
I am just grateful if someone has eaten their dinner.
I kind of knew that I was in for a HV ear-bashing today. She also thinks I need to go on ad's ( I do not).
Ds3 is ok, he will be what he will be, tall: short, skinny, chunky, (brutally handsome though of course!) whatever and there is no way of predicting that now.

Sometimes, just sometimes, placid, easy-going kids - and often they're the younger ones, and I have seen this happen with third and fourth babies - don't 'ask' to be fed very often. They're the ones who allow their mums to feed them at often wide intervals, they sleep well or are otherwise happy to watch their older sibs, and they don't 'bother' mum. Then, there is a crisis and it's realised the baby is really not thriving as he should, and mummy has to make an effort to feed him more often. This typically happens at a few months old.

This is not what is happening or has happened with your ds, as far as I can see, Kitty. He's obv a baby who is fed responsively and often (hence the hourly or so slurps!) and he is offered solids, which he accepts or not, without you making a big deal of it - and nor should you.

Trying to get a baby to eat more creates anxiety around meals which is difficult to cope with. If there is an issue about growth here at all, it's easily resolved by bf more and making sure the solids he has are calorie dense, and it sounds as if this is happening anyway

Btw Kitty I don't know if you remember this from the postnatal thread but last time I took ds to weigh in I had a different HV and was told "it's a pity he's too young for cows' milk, but you can give him stuff with cows' milk in it, like cream and cheese" because he was too skinny.

RTP, this thread will be very useful for you too. There are some wise and lovely people on Mn, even though I fight with some of them sometimes .

post xmas name change-tongue in cheek of course!

hiya kitty, wish I could be at hv but some of them seem full of nonsense. dd has dropped from 75 to 50 and my hv didn't bat an eyelid, nor at the bf on demand.

Kitty - I also have a booby loving ds who at nearly 8mths is below 2nd centile (born just under 50th at term and been dropping ever since). He is obviously happy and healthy and my hv pretty much said same thing to me.

TBH, have kind of taken on board some of her comments and make sure I feed him solids before breastfeeding as he'll never refuse a boob , whereas before I'd just plonk him on the boob if he appeared hungry even if it was near a mealtime. He does seem to be eating more and is certainly less grisly than he was - don't know if this is related to anything though!

I still feed him twice overnight, but this has come down from about 4 times since I started really trying to get some pattern with his meals.

Not really any 'help', I know - just a sort of similar story

Did you know that the centile charts are basede on figures for bottle fed babies ? They don't tell you that in the child health clinic eh ?

hi morocco how are you doing? I think it was he had gone from 75th to the 9th, over for bands or some such nonsense

madamy, that's interesting. I am trying to distract him a bit when he pulls at my clothes for boob. I think the only thing the HV said that did make sense was that he was using it as reassurance that I was there and all was ok iyswim?
So yesterday I tried distracting him when he started to hunt for boob and crying. It worked pretty well, dp commented on how unusually happy he seemed.

We'll see

Kitty, I don't understand why restricting his access to the breast is a good thing....he may be using it as reassurance, but why is that a good thing, especially as he may actually need it for nutrition and to meet his thirst.

Alfie - the charts in the UK are not based on bottle fed babies. This is a big myth, which I correct regularly on mumsnet! They are based on a massive dataset of UK babies, and their feeding is not differentiated. Many of them will have been formula fed, at least partially, of course, but that's not the same thing.

They don't tell you in the clinic the charts are based on bottle fed babies because it isn't true!

I'm wondering whether he's more contented as he's 'filling up' more with a solid meal. I know about milk being nutritionally superior etc, but wonder if he was grisly because although a milk feed would immediately satisfy him, he wasn't actually 'full' iykwim.
He does now eat much more than a couple of weeks ago - a couple of tablespoonfuls of savoury plus a yoghurt/fruit pot/some fruit etc for pud. Also he's having 3 meals and I'm giving him fruit/veg/toast etc snacks.
He's still feeding early morning, mid morning, afternoon, bedtime and 1-2 overnight though!

sorry - by 'he', I mean my ds

tiktok, sorry I didn't mean I am 'restricting' his access to milk.
What I am experimenting with is encouraging him away from the sucks that literally last 5 seconds. So I try and distract him and if that works then he is happily able to play next to but if he still insists on sucking I let him .

The health visitor said I am doing him a disservice by allowing him to continue to suck so frequently!!

She said it is much fairer on him to discourage it because otherwise he cannot explore and therefore develop emotionally and physically as he should because he is so breast focused. Like it is hindering his development or something .

i must say that as HV goes she is ok, but the more children I have raised the more I realise that although she means well she is talking claptrap. She hasn't got any children of her own either

I have had this and I also have 5 dc ,but with my first ds and dd the hv were always going on at me about dropping off charts and things gets me so mad

Esp as DD was brought up on completley home made food and ate like a horse still does tbh

Worse exp I had was taking dd to childrens hospital for a small bump she had got to her head a really arrogant DR took it upon himself to lecture me about feeding my dd right and that he may get her kept in hospital for "further investigation" stupid t**t still makes my blood boil thinking about it anyway after a phonecall to my gp and I think an earful off one of my DR's we were sent home quite quickly .