"failing to thrive" - please help!

[Caz10]

DD is between 5-6wks just now and put on 1lb in the first 3wks. (5lbs 15 at birth to 6lbs 15 at 3wks).

Now at 5wks + 4 she has dropped to 6lbs 11oz.

HV told me she was failing to thrive, said i HAD to top up with formula and basically scared the life out of me.

I have been working with a bfc to improve my latch as i know it has not been great - it is improving.

dd is alert, lots of wet nappies, 2-3 dirty nappies a day and has gone up a centile in length. they did her 6wk check this week for some reason and all was fine. surely she is not failing to thrive?

boxes of formula in the kitchen, not given yet, lots of tears from me. have to get her weighed again tomorrow and feel like i will be in trouble for not topping up.

i know all the things to try to get supply up, but HV has put such a sense of urgency round this that i feel i have to do something quickly.

i think my most urgent concern is, will i harm dd by NOT topping up for a few days while i think this through?

i am aware there are lots of similar threads to this, so off to have a look. thanks

thank you all, and janinlondon that is EXACTLY how I feel.

They keep asking me if I have enough milk, I have no idea how I'm meant to tell?

DD is lying in her wee crib just now bright as a button waving and cooing at her mobile...wish I could send them a video of it or something!

I have just "screened" her call, and ignored the message that said "just calling to see how you are doing with the formula"...

tiktok I am glad to hear you agree with the superswitching suggestion..she is a bit tired/full/unwilling by the time it gets to the "4th" breast is that ok? Also would you say 5-10 mins active feeding before the switch is ok? I've searched on the internet but can't find info on it anywhere, do youknow where i would find any at all?

veering between crying and wanting to slap HV for scaring me.

Yes they come to the house with digital scales, but yesterday she was weighed with older ones at the GP, which was the one that caused all the drama.

fishie my latch is so much improved, well, not perfect but better and hardly any pain!

Caz, you'll do best if you judge when to swap and when to stop by your baby's behaviour....not by the clock

Having said that, what you are doing sounds fine and if she nods off/loses interest before side 4 that's ok

Please don't tell me they used spring balance scales at the doctor's...they should go back to the Ark. They are simply not accurate....they are fine to use for fun or interest, but not as a basis of a clinical assessment of a baby's nutritional needs. And your HV should know that.

www.kellymom.com/newman/b-protocol_increase_bmilk_intake.html is a useful checklist for inc. baby's intake.

Anyone saying 'do you have enough milk?' is revealing their ignorance of how bf works and how it is assessed. Steer clear of them!

The only way you know you have enough milk is to assess the growth and health of your baby, and her output (wees and poos). We have enough evidence your baby is healthy. The accurate weighings showed she was growing well. The nappies are normal. It sounds like she is fine!

tiktok i'm not sure what kind of scales they were, but they looked older and didn't go beep!! we were still sitting a bit confused by being told she was getting her 6wk check a week before it was due...

a few people on other threads have mentioned seeing a GP for back up/support but ours was all in favour of the formula. she actually said that instead of a top up after a 2-breast feed we should give it after the 1st breast...again bfc was appalled...

Oh, crossed posts, thank you for that link tiktok.

I second what mommalove said:

when my hv finally cheesed me off completely, I told her I had made "alternative arrangements" to monitor my dd's progress and weigh her. And that I would not attend her clinic again.

For which read bought my own set of baby scales, read mumsnet a lot and attended baby cafe to see the lactation consultants.

much better.

fwiw my db was labeled ftt at some point AFTER I stopped breastfeeding and started formula feeding. He's just always been a little guy who doesn't eat much no matter what kind of milk he's offered and who gains weight VERY slowly. Regardless, now at 14 months he's happy, healthy, adorable (of course) and doing everything he "should" be doing at his age. Oh, and he's also still at the very bottom of the charts.

Remember that not all babies automatically pile on the pounds once they're given formula.

Caz

My baby is now 16 weeks old and had exactly the same experience as you - cried in Boots as I bought a tub of formula and then stared at it for 2 hours!

DD is my first and was 6lb 10oz when born and then got weighed 3 times in first 3 weeks and went up, then down, then up again. The health visitor said ..and i quote...."well it can't be our scales as they are always right so you need to start topping her up TODAY or she won't develop"!

i went home and cried, talked to DH and we decided that as DD was alert and responding with plenty of wet and dirty nappies that we would stick it out for 3 more weeks and then decide. Also got super swithing suggestion and am still doing this now.

DD gained weight slowly and never moved off 9th centile, with lots of movement up and down each week, but is doing all things she should be at 16 weeks and laughs out loud about 10 times a day...all in all a very happy baby.

In summary trust your instincts...as others have said, you know your baby and there are so many factors like wrong scales, the fact that the growth charts are still for formula feeding that affect a HV view.

It is very hard for us first timers as the guilt is immense but have confidence and good luck and hugs

My HV told me to top up with formula or wean at 16weeks because dd was gaining weight slowly from about 10 weeks and went from the 50th centile to about the 9th at her lowest. I ignored her and did my own thing but it was hard.

When I went to get dd weighed at 1 year, HV said 'oh lovely she's back on that 50th line. It's funny how so many of them drop off then get back up to where they started by a year.' Why the hell was she telling me I had to do something if it's a normal pattern to drop off the sodding line on the sodding chart and then get back up again in thier own time?

Speaking as a daughter of an HV the scales are calibrated so they should all be reading the same. Babies under a year are weighed naked. Go to the doctor if you are worried about her health. Make sure you are eating and drinking enough to produce your milk and just spend time feeding baby as much as she wants. It is exhausting but worth it. HVs are very quick to get you to top up IMO. They are very alert to statistics that don't follow the red book and the easiest way to get her following her centile is to top up with formula even though this mucks up your supply. Beg borrow or steal the DVD Breastfeeding without tears, it's brilliant.
Good Luck

Forgot to add that Kelly mom website has centile charts for breasfed babies which differ from the ones in the red book. You could show this to your HV.

Here is the link to the breasfeeding centile charts

www.kellymom.com/babyconcerns/growth/growthcharts.html

toolly, scales - even the ones that are calibrated - may not be accurate. This is well-known and there is research on it. Babies should be weighed naked, but often they are not. Some HVs and healthcare assistants are not consistent about this

Eating and drinking has no effect on milk production (though doing both 'properly' may well make the mum feed better).

Centile charts on the kellymom website will not help - the problem is not in the charts, but in the way they are interpreted. On the WHO charts, breastfed babies' lines are slightly higher than standard charts in the first weeks...so a 6 week old bf baby will look smaller. This does not matter, of course, but to show this to the HV would only 'confirm' the need for formula

Some people are just small. Like me! I was a 5 pounder nearly full term, fed well, gained slow, and today am not much over 5 ft and 7 stone.

My daughter was a petite baby at 5.5 pounds, but is now 6 and 50 centile for height and 4oth for weight.

My son is 8 nearly nine and was 6 pounds, but is now over 60th for height and 40th for weight. Also gained slowly, but eats alot. If she is healthy and happy, just ignore the HV, who are often programmed to rely on weight as a measure of health and nothing else

caz - from your previous link - am so glad your latch is now pain free, what a relief.
keep going girl!

When oh when will HVs stop looking at just the growth charts and look at the baby too!

It woiuldn't be so bad if they had even a smidgeon of understadning of what the statistics behind a centile chart meant. [angry[

My ds was a non failure to thrive baby who went from the 91st at birth to under the growth charts (after initial large drop, never lost wieght, just gaind extremely slowly, before eventually creeping up to the 25th, which he followed for a while and then moved up to the 50th at about a year, which he has (I think - he doesn't get weighed often ) followed ever since. he is now a happy, healthy 7 year old.

The only supplementation I did was EBM for a while on the advice of the breast feeding counsellors at the maternity hospital - the only people I let weigh ds!

Have no helpful advice (other than your hv is clearly mad!) but am really shocked at babies being weighed with their clothes on - surely a full nappy or different clothes can make a huge difference to the weight of a very small light baby? Ds was always weighed naked on the same set of scales. Just can't believe this isn't standard. Especially if the hv is then going to label your baby with "failure to thrive" based on such shoddy weighing!

hi

we had this from a mw when ds was 13 days. He had jaundice and we had been released after photo therapy (rather stressful) and then this mw comes and says ooh he isn't at birthweight yet, you'd better take him to casualty. My instinct said that's complete and utter...... But obviously being a new mum I wanted to check it out first.

So I called a family friend who's a very experienced GP and ran a baby clinic for years. She said, so long as alert, plenty of wet and dirty nappies, feeds often it's not a problem. She also said that the portable scales vary an awful lot. The only accurate way to do it is to go to a baby clinic (with fixed scales) every week at the same time and weigh without clothes. At the very early stage it makes a difference whether they've just had a feed or not or had a dirty nappy. Also she said that a study had shown that babies who were weighed more often than once a week lost weight (probably because their mothers were being bullied and stressed by HVs!!!). Therefore there is no need to go more than once a week and even once every two weeks is find at this stage.

DS was never huge but after that mw I got some nice hvs so they didn't try and force formula on us or make me put him on solids at 20 weeks.

HTH and good luck.

It can take up to 2 weeks for a baby to regain birth weight which your dd has done and she has another 12lbs on top of that. Normal weight gain is about 4oz per week. So at 5 1/2 weeks taking away the first two weeks gives 3 1/2 weeks where she should have gained approx 10oz and has actually gained 12. Sounds totally normal to me!

And that is just based on the average.

My ds2 was very slow in gaining weight - not at first but it took him 6 months to double his birth weight (which was a normal 7.3 lbs) then at a year old he was only 19.3 lbs so had only put on 12lbs in a whole year. Now aged 2 1/2 he is only about 24lbs which is the average size of a 16 month baby. He isn't a big eater but completely fine, some people are just small.

Forgot to add this was on breastfeeding, fortuntately no-one mentioned formula to me. good luck with your dd.

Long time no see Eulalia - nice to "see" you Missed you at the Scottish Christmas meet-up

Hope you are doing OK, I had to post on your thread as it brought back so many memories for me. My dd1 who is now 4years old was born at 5lb4oz, the midwife used to weigh her daily, told me to top her up after about 2 weeks, she was quite insistant about it and I thought that I had no choice, I did as I was told and it made no difference to her weight gain. At 4 wo she was hospitalised for projectile vomiting and they wouldn't let us back out of the hospital as they said 'they needed to check we were feeding her' WTF ( I have since been told that I am lucky social services weren't called). After that she was weighed every other day for months, I eventually gave up bf at about 6 weeks only to find she developed severce excema, I then reintroduced bf about 4 weeks later, which while it is perfectly do able is not easy. Despite all this my dd was 10months old before she was actually labelled as fail to thrive it is a label and means nothing.
My DD has never gained much weight, I since trainied as a bf counsellor to try to help other people who feel bullied by the HVs and midwives.
When my dd2 was born at the same weight and failed to gain weight they siad oh you obviously have little babies. So months of heartache with dd1 were actually for nothing.
Anyway sorry about the long story but I hope it helps, you know if your baby is Ok and if you are seeking help from a bf counsellor then don't rush or be bullied into any decisions.

Afraid I had the opposite experience from everybody else. I was convinced I knew better than my health visitor and that my baby was fine because she seemed alert and happy. She went downhill very rapidly and we ended up in hospital. It took many weeks of desperately hard work to turn her round. The bf counsellor was a lifesaver. I only found out years later that the main cause of the problem was a genetic connective tissue disorder, which made her unable to suck properly.

When her hv later started worrying about her failure to bear weight, I dismissed that also - I had read so many articles where people were told never to worry about this. It turned out to be the same connective tissue disorder, and dd has spent a lot of the last 4 years in a wheelchair. I now know that she could have been spared years of unexplained pain if somebody had got to the bottom of this earlier.

Not wanting to panic anyone- just to point out that things vary from case to case. For every 100 parents who have been scared unnecessarily, there may actually be one who is being (unintentionally) negligent. Like I was. Not because I didn't care or I hadn't read up on babyhood, but because I had only read things; my hv had real experience. I have a friend who is a health visitor, and they do see some scarey things.

Oh hi prettybird! how did it go - I guess there is a thread somewhere, I will have a look. I seem to remember it was parents only and I have difficulty getting childcare.