Was my breastmilk just a bit crap?

[HolidaysQueen]

DS is 13.5mo and I bf him until the week before his birthday. We had a rocky start - me very anaemic, him a 4kg baby who then gained very slowly indeed, me panicked into using formula once a day, continual worry about supply etc. But by 12mo we had dropped the formula, I was relaxed about his weight gain and he had levelled out onto 9th centile being 8.5kg at his birthday (so a few days after I stopped bf).

Anyway, he now has one cup of cows milk per day instead of 2bf, and he has always eaten good amounts of food. His food intake has increased a little, but that was to be expected as he has suddenly become a crawling champion, and is standing, starting to cruise etc.

Anyway, needed to see if he was 9kg as really need to move him from his too small car seat, so I took him to get weighed today. In 7 weeks he has put on 1.2kg and jumped up to the 25th centile!!!! It is the first time he has ever moved up a centile, the weekly weight gain is more than he ever did as a newborn.

The only real difference is the milk - 1 cup fo whole milk vs 2 bfs. His food intake isn't so much bigger and has to be largely negated by his increased activity.

So do I just accept that my bm was a bit crappy or my supply was rubbish after all? It's a genuine question - I want to avoid all the heartache with a future DC, and want to know what I can do to make my supply better or at least just know that my bm is a bit rubbish weight gain is to be expected. Can some people's bm just be a bit less calorific than others?

My dd2 did this too. Went from the 5th-9th centile which she had been on since a few weeks old to the 50th at about 1yo. I stopped bf at about 8.5months and was worried about the same thing, even though her elder brother has been on the 98th centile all his life and was bf for about the same.

I dont think that it is a problem now. She is nearly 2.5 and has stuck on same centile. I feel quite sure that she was getting enough as she never acted anymore hungry than she does now.

Oh and I am just about to start to give dd3 formula and she has been on the 75th centile since a few weeks old. She has been more hungry than dd2 so has had more feeds and has piled on the pounds.

Id say they are all diff so dont worry about next time xxx

Bumping for you because there are probably better qualified people to answer but I would be surprised if there was anything wrong with your milk - surely more likely that it was just in his genes to gain slowly for the first year and then have a sudden growth spurt or something Plus all the other things he will have got from being bfed for so long, like antibodies etc.

Holidays, there's no evidence that women produce milk of varying nutritional quality - and they have looked for this! Calorie content varies very little between women. Supply does differ, but a trickle of a supply is overcome by frequent feeding. Babies differ in their physiology - some will gain weight faster than others, and some slower.

Babies do develop, and grow, not in smooth 'curves' but sometimes by leaps and bounds, and sometimes sudden leaps. It doesn't matter, when the underlying health is good.

It's not something you need to worry about now, or in the future, IMO

Thanks! It doesn't really affect my willingness to bf any future DC - I did it for so long mainly for the longer term health benefits and for bonding and just accepted that his weight gain was at the lower end of average. So far that seems to have worked for him - he's had no tummy upsets and few other illnesses (touch wood!). But it is just so surprising that given his really slow weight gain in his first year that he has started his second year with a ridiculous leap up really and I can only really tie that to a switch to cows milk, so wondered if it is possible for some people's bm to be semi-skimmed

Tiktok - amazing that the calorific content is so stable across the population. Makes me feel a bit better. BM is rather amazing stuff!

sounds to me like he's had a growth spurt

nothing to do with your milk, I wouldn't have thought

children do have growth spurts

quite normal

if he's been healthy he has clearly thrived on your milk