FF Baby not gaining weight, help!

[Paranoidandroid1]

My baby is 11 weeks old, he was born very small below the 2nd centile. He was combi fed with formula and expressed milk as he couldn’t latch but has been exclusively FF for about 6 weeks, on Kendamil.

He was moving up to the 9th centile but in the last 3 weeks hasn’t gained any weight at all. He’s now back off the bottom of the growth chart.

His eating habits don’t seem different but he is sometimes fussy on the bottle and he has gaviscon for reflux. I physically can’t get more milk into him as he won’t drink if not hungry and he won’t take a bigger feed than 4oz. What can I do?

I would go to the GP for a check up, there can be things that cause this that you should rule out

If you aren’t concerned about CMPA

Genuinely… calm down and step away from the WHO growth charts.

i had a similar situation
my baby was born on 65th went to 4th and is now tracking around 9th.
i spent 3 months rigorously trying to “get him to 50th”
he has bad reflux and cmpa. He would only drink what he would drink and I wasted a lot of time and energy on it.
i’d get stressed if he was too active because he was “burning up the calories I just put in him” 😅

he is tracking on 9th at around 4.5m I gave up focusing on his weight and it’s the best thing I could have done.

i can see he is happy and healthy he is gaining weight just not at the rate a curve tells me he should.

my husband reminded me i had the opposite Fear with my Dd who was “too big” she’s 2.5 now and bang on 50th despite being at 98th + up to 18m

that said if you don’t feel your baby IS healthy push for follow ups

My 14 week old is 2nd centile and will not take more than 100ml of formula per feed so sounds very similar. And that amount takes over an hour to drink. As i still offer the breast as well (although latching is very difficult so she doesnt bf effectively), I thought she was just a very slow feeder but our HV happen to visit and observed a particularly terrible feed. She referred us to the speech and language team for a feeding assessment. They identified some issues with how DD2 is sucking and swallowing, which is making her really tired and why she isnt drinking effectively so we are now being referred to paeds. SALT also gave me some different bottles / teats to try and see if there was any improvement. So I'd say definitely worth a HV or GP visit just to see if there is anything that needs to be ruled out.

We are under close supervision from the HV due to the reflux and now the lack of weight gain, we’ve seen a feeding consultant a lot when I was trying to BF but they’ve not seen much bottle feeding so that could be something to try. We’ve had a tongue tie assessed and cut, and a phone consult with the gp because of the suspected reflux. I’m really not sure why he’s stopped gaining as his gain was quite steady since he was born.

Please do not worry. My DS was the same. He was always on the lowest centile and some weeks he didn't put any weight on. He just didn't seem to like milk! It was a struggle to get him to feed well. Some days the only time he took more than 4oz was the dreamfeed at bedtime. In the end, the HV recommended weaning him at 4 months so we could get more milk in him through cheese, rice pudding, cereal etc.

He is now about to turn 18 years old!! He doesn't have a massive appetite and is only just in the healthy range BMI. He is very slim but eats healthily. He just doesn't seem to have the urge to stuff himself and often forgets to eat! But he is happy and healthy.

Try not to worry, your ds might be like mine and just naturally not as hungry. Keep going back to the HV for regular checks and they will help you if they're concerned.

He’s also a very calm and settled baby when he’s not feeding and is hitting all his milestones. He generally sleeps 10pm - 7am giving less time to get all the feeds in!

My daughter dropped to 5 second breastfeeds due to cmpa and reflux. I don't know how but she some how gained weight ok. It might be worth exploring both.

My sister had weight gain issues. She was 6lb13 at birth and by 10 weeks was just 7lb10. She was readmitted for refeeding and weaned early. She projectile vomited daily up to 2 when she stopped and started climbing the curves. As an adult she found she would be randomly sick periodically which stopped when she went vegan in her late 30s so we suspect that she probably had a dairy allergy as a baby and didn't gain full tolerance. Aged 2 is a typical age that babies out grow their dairy allergies.

I'm 1 of 3. I was 2nd percentile baby, eldest is above and was 1 before she reached the 0.4th and youngest was an average baby. I'm the shortest at 5ft2 and the eldest is the tallest at 5ft4 all slim builds and share clothes. Our sizes as babies had little impact on our adult sizes. The eldest is now the only one without allergies!