I will contact my HV tomorrow and discuss it with her, but I was wondering if there were any medical professionals about who might be able to advise today!
My little girl will be 6 weeks old on Wednesday and is currently breast fed (using nipple shields) with top ups of expressed breast milk or formula. This started due to >8.5% weight loss as a newborn and are still continuing now as we’ve had some issues with her going a few days without gaining/having a very small loss over a few days. The idea is to gradually decrease the top ups (as advised by the lactation consultant who snipped her tongue tie) to increase my supply without her losing weight.
I took her to a self weigh last week and she’s gained 200g in 10 days, which is slightly less than everyone would like but is apparently the lower end of acceptable. Previously she has gained 220g in a week (when having larger top ups) which is obviously more of an ideal weight gain.
When I plot this new weight into the graph in her red book she falls somewhere between the 50th and 25th percentile, almost exactly in the middle. At birth she was 3605g, which according to my red book is around the 70th percentile and when she was weighed on the 20th and 27th June she was tracking the 50th. So while she is dropping she’s only crossed one of the lines and she is still gaining. Her dad’s family are all very small so she is unlikely to be very big.
However when I use an online calculator to work out her percentile, or a separate WHO document that has all of the exact weights in a table (which is much easier than the graph!) they both say she was about 78th percentile at birth. This would mean that she has now crossed two centile lines which I know is more of a worry. Does anyone know why the numbers are so different? In her red book 3.6kg is quite clearly below the 75th centile line for a girl.