failing to thrive part 2 the saga continues...

[Caz10]

so pleased, my little skinny dd was weighed last week and had gained....7oz in 9 days! . I was so pleased! this has been almost entirely without formula - on 2 occasions the cluster feeding at night was becoming unbearable and i cracked up and offered a bottle but she only took 1-2oz each time. So I was really chuffed and feeling a bit more confident about breasfeeding.

however i then had a gp appointment for her as her fontanelle was a bit sunken again. I wasn't too worried as she'd been feeding reasonably well (i thought) and had the weight gain to prove it.

appointment lasted all of 2 mins, gp looked aghast that i had only done formula top ups for a weekend, said she should be back on formula "so you can see how much is going in" and has referred us to the hospital paed. . I know she is talking guff but it has totally knocked my confidence.

Caz

Your dd's weight gain was a real boost for you! Not sure why you are seeing the GP - a sunken fontanelle is not a reliable sign of anything in a young baby, as the soft spot goes in and out anyway

A truly sunken fontanelle would not be the only sign of dehydration - there'd be far more obvious signs than this! A baby who gains 7 oz in 9 days is not dehydrated....

Talk to your HV about this. Sounds to me that you are peering at dd's head and trying to judge if it is sunken and getting yourself worried....analysing and peering and wondering

You can also talk to your HV about the way your doc reduced your confidence, too.

thanks tiktok. sadly my HV is even worse than the GP - has been trying to get me on formula for a month now

i have to confess i didn't even know what a fontanelle WAS until about a month ago when the HV had a go at me about dd's weight, told us we had to give formula at the NEXT feed and no we couldn't have time to think about it! In conjunction with that she told me that dd was "failing to thrive" etc and that her sunken fontanelle was evidence of that.

thankfully the bfn put me in touch with the bf-ing consultant at the maternity unit - she has been great and i have left her a message re the current situation, so i should get more sensibe advice next week

however i am that a GP is telling me stuff like this, i've met 3 mums in the past month who gave up bf-ing before 4wks because of advice coming from the same gp's practice.

Also - and please can someone reassure me on this - i thought 7oz was pretty good? verging on being quite a "normal" weight gain?

sorry, re the fontanelle, i honestlty hadn't given it any thought, but just noticed in the bath that it was sunken, and my mind immediately went back to the hv telling me it meant she was "unwell". stupidly i made a gp apt rather than call the hv cos i thought the gp might be more sensible...

7oz is BRILLIANT.

I really can't see how they can make you FF your baby unless there are real and serious issues.

Someone will be along soon who knows.

Sparkygothcat has had similar with her DS, maybe ask her?

thanks Nab, yes i've spoken to her before, very inspiring!
i was pleased with our 7oz
just when i thought things were getting better...gutted

Forget about it! You are doing fab!!

7 oz in 9 days is a normal weight gain.

Caz - I think it will help you to have a checklist of what to look for. I am not a doctor, or medically trained in any way, but I do know that dehydrated babies need medical attention and they have more than just a sunken fontanelle, which is notoriously difficult to be sure about anyway.

A baby dehydrated enough to have sunken fontanelle will be clearly ill...maybe your HV (useless as she is) will give you some pointers to help you gain confidence in your own ability to assess your baby, as she's done a bloody good job of taking it away

Maybe call her tomorrow, or speak to one of her colleagues, and explain what happened?

Seeing the paed, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing - the paed might restore your confidence, and give your baby a thorough check.

BTW Caz, I meant to respond to this thread a while back...

babycarrot's fontanelle is down and up like an uppydowny thing. It used to freak me out and then I decided to ignore it. It hasn't bulged upwards, obv, but it is sometimes a little depressed (probably due to being told it lives on a non-thriving baby)

I noticed that if she had a case of the screaming abdabs that always caused it to sink a bit, but when she calmed down it restored itself to normal.

Go figure...