Can eeating more whilst breastfeeding really increase babys weight gain?

[Deaby]

Just got my 14 week baby weighed and although she is putting on 3 ounces a week on average she is a little one and is constantly below the 2nd centile on the growth charts. The health visitor has advised that as she is alert, happy, content, pooing and weeing well, it is my diet that is affecting her not putting on as much weight as she sould. The health visitor advised that I need to basically pig out eat lots of choclates and cakes etc and have 4 meals a day! Im only petite myself and scared Im gonna get fat! Has anyone else been in this position??? Does increasing food intake help baby put weight on? hmm

Tis rubbish. You'll put on weight but will make beggar all difference to the baby.

She's just small like her Mum. Your hv is a loon.

NO. You should eat and drink healthy food and fluids regularly (maybe hv thinks you're not doing that?) but pigging out is not required. To increase your baby's calorie intake, feed more often. This will increase your milk supply.

How often do you feed (on average) over 24 hours? Is she exclusively bf or are you supplementing? Do you offer both breasts at each feed?

As both you and she are petite, maybe she does not need to gain weight any faster.

Im feeding 6 times over 24 hours. And she only empties 1 breast and seems satisfied after that. Im exclusively bf.

As others have said, eat and drink to your hunger and thirst and ignore what the HV has said.

You would have to be on deaths door from malnutrition before your diet made any difference to your milk.

I got told by the lactation consultant at my hospital that I should be feeding dd at that age AT LEAST 8 times in 24 hrs, so I think if you have any concerns the bext way would just be to feed her more often! But she sounds fine, lots of threads on here re dumb-ass HVs and slow weight gain babies!

Ha! If the amount I ate affected DS he would be a big fatty!
Sounds like you're doing fine, but as suggested above, you can offer more feeds if you're worried about LOs weight.

xx

Thanks people, thicnk Im gonna increase her feeds and see if that helps.

..but it's a good excuse for the odd slice of cake!

You know, it's pretty bad when HVs tell mothers rubbish like this...

That sounds like a good plan Deaby.

FWIW I was really ill when I had DS and hardly ate anything for about a month. During that time he went from the 75th to the 91st centile. When I got better I started eating more and my appetite was HUGE...meanwhile DS started to drop centiles and is now somewhere between 25th and 50th at 24m and has been for over 18m. It is obviously his natural size and nothing to do with what I ate or anything else.

I think she may be thinking of a study which compared "successful breastfeeders" with those who had supply issues and found that the "successful" ones ate up to 1000 calories a day more than the ones with supply issues.

If you had a supply issue, eating more (but not forcefeeding yourself, just making sure you don't let yourself miss meals and get hungry and don't diet) might help. But you don't have a supply issue. Your DD is doing fine, she's just small and so your daft HV thinks she should "catch up". Had exactly the same thing. FWIW my DS did catch up when he went onto solid food and is now quite massive, but he was perfectly normal and happy when on milk only.

Stop getting your DD weighed - she is obviously fine, and I'm sure you've got better things to do than have weekly conversations with a bit of a crackpot.

Thanks mrsgboring. Its so worrying every week going to get her weighed! My baby is defo not malnutritioned and is always happy and smiling. Sometimes I dont think the HVs take mums size, and race into account. Plus, arent the growth charts based on formula fed babies which tens to be little fatties anyway? x

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Deaby, regarding the number of feeds, DD at 14 weeks was down to 6 feeds a day as well. I tried to nurse more often but she wasn't interested.
She was obviously an efficient nurser, not to mention my milk was abundant- and she was growing, just like yours is doing.

If she needed more feeds, she'd let you know. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Aurorec, thats reassuring. My LO doesnt seem unhappy and starved!Like you say, Im sure shed let me know if she was wanting more feeds. Im going to try extra feeds anyway and see if they work. Ill go back in two weeks to get her weighed and see if its made a difference.

Aurorec, thats reassuring. My LO doesnt seem unhappy and starved!Like you say, Im sure shed let me know if she was wanting more feeds. Im going to try extra feeds anyway and see if they work. Ill go back in two weeks to get her weighed and see if its made a difference.

I'm shocked to hear that a hv has given that advice. If a baby is alert, happy, content, pooing, weeing and gaining weight rather than losing weight, surely there isn't a problem to address? Why are they allowed to say such things?

I suspected the advice was a load of rubbish when I read your post but I'm reassured to read the posts confirmimg it as I've had the odd concern about my own dd but for opposite reasons. She is a bulky little thing and is nearly above the 91st centile; I do have moments where I pig out on biscuits and I have wondered if it's possible that my diet is making her fat!

My hv has given me a Breast From Birth growth chart for dd's red book. She's at the same point in both charts at the moment but I think it's normal for a bf baby's weight gain to slow down after a few months and I think that's where the charts differ. I'll be interested to see the difference on the charts as she gets older. Might be worth asking your hv for one?

FlabbyTumSquashyBum, don't worry about it. I eat very healthily and exercise often. My dd was born on the 50th centile and shot up to the 91st within weeks. By 12 weeks she was off the charts completely. I exclusively bf for 7 months and am still bfing now at 17 months.

Here's the key thing. DD is very tall. She's still off the charts for weight but where she used to be a podgy little thing (I loved her rolls!), she's lean and tall now. They don't seem to account for that at all. And the weight gain slows down, I promise. Especially when they start running around.

Isn't it marvellous that all of our babies come in their own sizes and shapes? The hvs should hand out regulation dolls and have done with it.

that you are getting such wrong advice from your HV deaby.

Here's a link to the WHO charts for breast fed babies (weight for age) for your information.

It sounds like you are doing a fab job and she is doing well on it. Don't let your badly informed HV undermine your confidence

you don't need to eat more for the baby but if you have no fat stores and are reasonably active then you will need to eat more for you least you lose too much weight. Think its like pregnancy the baby will take what it needs and be fine; you need to make sure that you eat enough and healthy so that your body can recover afterwards

Think also the correlation between sucessful breastfeeding + increased calorie intake is the other way. Good supply results in a hungry mother results in more food. This does not mean that more food results in more supply

My midwife visited on day 10 after DD was born and advised me to pig out on chocolate and biscuits during the evening so that the milk I was feeding DD during the night would be more enriched and make her sleep longer!?!?
She reckons it would help her to sleep through earlier...? ( I just nodded and smiled vaguely )