Breastfeeding post 1 year + food intake

[BertieBotts]

Sorry, I have posted about this before, but it is bothering me again.

DS is 17 months, breastfed on demand and obviously eats solids as well. He is not a big eater, and never has been. He was born on about the 9th centile and since then has been consistently between the 25th and 50th.

At about 4 months, he dipped down between the 25th and 9th centiles, I was advised to give him baby rice so I just stopped going to clinic, carried on breastfeeding, ended up starting BLW at about 5 months.

The next time I got him weighed at his 9 month check he was back between the 25th and 50th centiles again. There are a couple of measurements of this, then nothing until over a year, when I moved, and took him to clinic because I had moved and wanted to see the HV. I got him weighed again but he was sleepy so I didn't undress him and the weight mark was around the 50th centile.

Now recently the HV has come to see me at home because I moved, she weighed him naked, and he appeared to have dropped loads of weight - from 10.88kg to 10.56kg in about a month - but this was not taking into account the fact he wasn't clothed, he had a cold, and had started walking in between these times. Also he was wriggling and did not want to sit on the scales, so it was possibly not a brilliant reading in the first place. So I was not concerned about this apparent weight loss and she did not seem concerned either, but said that she would weigh him again the next time she came. So she came the other day and weighed him again, he is now at 10.96, which is exactly where I would expect him to be on the chart if he is following the curve he always has done. But she still seems to be worrying about it and keeps telling me that I can access help to get DS into a "feeding routine" to only feed him morning and night. I don't want to get him into a feeding routine - I am happy the way things are.

So I am wondering whether it is a problem that he doesn't eat a lot (she thinks that he is filling up on breastmilk, which I find hard to believe as it doesn't fill him up any more. He can have a massive feed and then eat a meal - and if he doesn't eat before bed, it doesn't matter how much milk I give him, he will still wake up) and if it is, I am thinking that there must be a better way to reduce him feeding than suddenly restricting him to morning and night feeding. But my gut feeling is that is isn't a problem anyway and I should just carry on as I am - after all if she hadn't weighed him then she probably wouldn't even be worried about it. Gah!

Bertie - I agree with your gut feeling. If your ds seems well and is gaining any weight, I don't see any need to alter his diet, esp his intake of breastmilk. So what if it fills him up - it's still the perfect food. If you want him to gain weight, why not just give him more calorie-dense foods, eg go easy on the carrot sticks, and mash avocado into his meals. Offer him a little more fish, maybe - for protein. I am talking about altering the balance of foods offered rather than the total amount.

Different children have different appetites.

The other matter that springs to mind is his nappies. "Toddler diarrhoea" can impede weight gain; you haven't mentioned it so I take it this is not a problem?

Sometimes I think HVs are just there to make you worry about something when there is nothing to worry about!
If DS is healthy and you are happy, then I say keep with what you are doing.
HVs do seem to be obsessed with getting babies off their milk onto food. For example, one of my friends was told (at 8 months!!!) that she had to drastically reduce the amount of milk her baby had and it should be 300ml by 1 yr. Which I think is nuts. She ended up getting her baby onto cows milk far too early and trying to force a cup before her baby was ready.

Elasticwoman - no, no diarrhoea here - more like constipation actually which she also thought might be that he wasn't eating enough food (because first she said he possibly wasn't having enough fruit if he was constipated, so I tried to increase this but then he was eating more fruit and veg and less protein etc so she said this was wrong - I can't win!)

Hi BertieBotts

You know your baby best and so i would say get more support for going with your gut instinct.

There is a great book called "my child won't eat" but it's now out of print so you can't buy it on Amazon etc but my little local library has a copy so it's worth checking yours out. It's very reassuring about how much babies / children eat and also about the percentiles.

LLL have a new leaflet out about toddlers and eating. You can buy a copy here

If he is following the same curve he is fine, my ds always been btwn 9th and 25th centile, hv also suggested he was having too much breastmilk at ten mnths, advice which was ignored. I was vastly reassured when we checked were his dad would have been on the charts at 20 ( before my cooking and middle aged beer spread!) and he was in exactly the same space! All the 50th percentile means is that 50% of the children measured were on or below that line, not that being on that line is the healthy ideal.