Hello,
My baby is 15 weeks old, 4 months in two week's time.
He was born on the 9th centile at 40+3 so not huge. After birth he had to be admitted to NICU due to severe meconium aspiration. He was tube fed, sedated, ventilated and on a strong medication cocktail for 3 weeks. I started breastfeeding him when he was two weeks old and have been ebf since he came home at 3 weeks old.
He'd been tracking along the 0.5th centile since then, which our pediatrician said was fine given his history. However, I had him weighed yesterday and he's now completely fallen off the chart, still only weighing 4720g.
Another red flag they said is that he's still feeding every 1-2 hours day and night.
He's a happy baby otherwise and has been given a clean bill of health at his 8 week check-up. He is also hitting all milestones so far so no concerns there.
I think the issue is my milk supply as I expressed some after his feed this morning and barely got 5ml out each side and it looked quite watery. I presume he's simply not getting much high calorie milk from me.
So we decided to top him up with formula, as advised by the health visitor, 3x 30ml a day. Unfortunately he's totally refusing the bottle. We tried a syringe, which he also refused. Will try a cup next but I have little hope of him taking that either.
So what's next? The HV said we could look into introducing solids at 5 months but that's still quite a few weeks away. I can't imagine solids earlier than that because he can't sit up yet and just completely refuses anything but boob in his mouth.
What's the dangers of such slow weight gain?
Do I just trust he will catch up in his own time? Do I persevere with bottles? Any advice anyone?
Thank you if you've read this far
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