Why do bf babies gain weight at different rates?

[WalkingBoob]

I've been ebf my DD for 18 weeks now (). She is a slow gainer (2-3 oz pw) who clings to the 2nd centile at around 11lb 6oz. Despite this I am proud of what I have achieved and she seems a healthy and happy little girl.

...however I can't help feeling inadequate when I read/hear about other bf babies who are fed just 5-6 times a day (10+ for me lately ), who are above 25th centile and gaining in excess of 8 oz per week!!

I need to try and understand why this is. What am I doing differently to these mothers, if anything? Are there inate physiological differences between babies that mean weight gain occurs at different rates regardless?

Your thoughts would be very welcome

Morloth, have you tried scalding your milk. When I expressed and froze bm it smelt really wierd. Ds didn't actually mind it, but it was really awful smelling I could never tell if it was fresh or what. It seems some women's milk does react this way, even just storing it in the fridge can cause it to happen. Something to do with the fat structures changing. It's absolutely fine to give to your baby if it has this funny smell, but if your ds is put off it, you can try scalding it. You very gently heat it in a pan and as soon as bubbles start forming around the edge of the milk you take it off the heat and put the pan in a few inches of cold water in the sink. Don't let it boil. Let it cool to the correct temp before feeding ds, or you can freeze it straight after scalding. Try that and see if you ds likes it better.

It always tastes pretty good HeadFairy just always different. I have heard about scalding and we did have the incident of the "shaken" bottle which apparently can mess with the lipase or something, it smelled cheesy and that lot did get tossed.

DS only has one bottle a week, so that I can bugger off for a bit with DS1.

That's good. My sister always thought I was being terribly precious about not shaking bottles of ebm, I'm glad I'm not the only one who actually reads up on these things!

What's this about shaking? I've just started expressing and have been shaking the bottle before offering it to my son...

I don't really understand the question tbh. Some babies are big, some are small. Mostly it's genetic. Not all babies are going to be on the 50th centile. Of course not, it's an average. And why would you want your baby to be on the 75th if they're meant to be on the 25th? It's not a competition or a measure of your mothering ability. BFing when a child is well, happy, alert, developing etc is a very clever thing. The baby will be the size it is meant to be. If fed to requirement, they are not under or overfed usually.

Not all adults are the same size, why would you expect if of a baby?

There's something on kellymom, I'll see if I can find it, apparently shaking a bottle of ebm changes something in the milk, sorry that's so vague.... back in a mo.

i found this on kellymom

I used to swirl it to make sure it was properly mixed after I'd warmed it up. My dsis thought I was being so precious!

SoH I think there is a lot of pressure on mothers if their babies aren't big, from hv, family, and others. You are told your baby isn't thriving, that you have inferior/not enough milk, basically you need to be v strong and confident in the face of multiple voices telling you that bf isn't working

it shouldn't be a competition, but it can feel that way. As I said, I was told by one hv at a bf support group that he needed to be putting on a pound a week, and if I couldn't do this it was a sure sign that something was wrong

I was made to feel like some neurotic weirdo for insisting in bf, I only persisted cos my dd had similar patterns of growth which a different hv team were happy with, and because of support from a board certified lactation consultant. It also helped that he was under paed care (unrelated to growth) and the paed was unconcerned

if he had been my first I would have changed to ff by 8 weeks, I think

Thanks Headfairy - I shall start swirling - PFB and all

Yup, DH thought I was precious about this as well, until he shook it and it went cheesy really fast. Then he calls me in a panic saying all the milk I had left was off. First question was "did you shake it?", the next batch he warmed up was just fine.

If you looked at a group of teenagers, they would all be different heights. If you looked at them again in 3-4 months, they would all be different again in relation to each other - some would have almost caught up with the taller ones, others will have overtaken them, some won't have grown much at all. And yet you never get a thread on here saying "Oh help, my DD is the shortest in her class, what have I been doing wrong?"

It's the same with babies and weight, it's just because they grow much faster and we weigh them often and we are totally in control of their food intake that we worry about it.

Babies are all different, don't sweat it

Perfect day for me to read this thread. DD is 13 days old and I had blotted out the tyranny of the scales from 3 yrs ago when I had DS. Was fully expecting to be discharged by midwives today , but just been having a moment of misery, as DD not back up to birth weight, so got to be visited and weighed every few days till she is. HV also been today, thankfully stopped her from weighing baby too. All professionals agree DD looks great. She didn't lose as much as 10% of birth weight, so there appears to be no cause for concern. Now I've been told to pump as well to try and increase milk levels, so life really will be entirely about bf. I just feel crap, a failure, and like the pressure is on even more for me to turn things around for Friday. Anyway this thread has cheered me up a bit, thank you all!

You don't have to be visited everyday whenwill, if you think it will help you then fine, if you think it will cause anxiety then don't. If DD looks well then don't let them mess your head up. Cancel Friday and put it off till next week to take the pressure off.

Also, I would think just letting DD at the boobs would be more effective than pumping. I have stacks and stacks of milk as evidenced by giant baby but I can't pump anymore than about 30mls in one sitting, it just doesn't work very well and your nipples are not going to get the same feedback from a pump as they are from DD.

Very interesting stuff! As Chibi points out, it's difficult to shake feelings of inadequacy if you have a slow gainer.

I can totally get that some babies are big and others small, just as adults are - no problem. What stumps me is that I can feed my baby as much or more than someone else and yet their child gains twice as much per week . So it's the growth rate that bugs me as opposed to weight IYSWIM.

Have to admit to having shaken ebm quite a few times as it hase seperated in the fridge Hadn't noticed any cheesiness!

There are just too many variables WalkingBoob for there to really be any consistency. Metabolic rate, muscle/fat ratio in baby etc.

For the same reason that someone can eat a pile of crap and remain whippet thin when the same diet will cause obesity in someone else.

Yes, nicely put Morloth, that does make sense. Just like pre-pregnancy I was a size 8 and could eat half a packet of jaffa cakes withou a second thought, but now...

If you're bottle feeding then surely you are giving them a regular bottle whether they want it or not, then you are giving them potentially more calories then they need. So Bottle fed babies tend to be bigger and chubbier - that's what my MW told me anyway.

Baby moderates their own intake of breastmilk to suit their own metabolism. I guess this makes sense.

thanks morloth - I meant to ask when I posted whether pumping was likely to do any good in boosting my milk supply. Firstly, not sure that milk supply is actually the issue here, and secondly, when I had DS, I used to get pretty dispirited because sometimes I could pump a reasonable amount, more often not. There is a really nice bf support group that meets on Friday - used it before with DS, so I will definitely prioritise that over hanging around waiting for midwife.

whenwill I second morloth in saying don't worry too much about pumping. I did it obssessively for ds because it took him 8 weeks to regain his birth weight and I was getting lots of pressure from hvs. He had a poor latch and was taking forever to feed, which I misinterpreted as him not being hungry. But I found pumping very dispiriting, because I could see how much I was producing I got competitive with myself, which is a load of crap.

This time I have not bothered with expressing (how can you with a toddler around?) and have done loads of skin to skin and coslept and that has really helped. Plus I put dd to the breast at almost every whimper, if she's interested she'll have a proper feed, if not she'll have a quick suck then something else will distract her and she'll not bother.

Ignore my post - I have totally misread what you were asking.

I reckon it totally has a genetic basis.

My mum breastfed me in the 70s and got lots of hassle from health visitors because I didn't gain much. I was 8lb5 when I was born so fairly big but didn't gain much at all in my 1st year.

Throughout my childhood I was always the shortest in the class (we had to line up in order of height to go into assembly so I could never forget this fact!) and skinny too. I'm only 5 ft 3 now. Mum says with hindsight I was meant to be small and she wished she hadn't worried about it so much.

My DD on the other hand was same weight as me when she was born, but was over the 91st percentile by 3 months. She was massive and I struggled to carry her in her sling on my front, as she was so long and heavy. She's nearly 3 now and still tall for her age. DH is over 6ft so I guess she'll be tall like him and tower over me at age 13

Oooh I get so sad when I hear about the stress health visitors pile on mums at such a vulnerable time when they are supposed to be helping them! We're growing beautiful precious babies not as heavy as you can make 'em prize marrows.
For what it's worth someone has to be on the first and 2nd centile of growth just as someone has to be on the 98th and so long as your LO is alert, hitting those milestones and entirely running your life for you I think you're doing just fine. And don't forget those charts are STILL based on formula fed babies! Anyhew chin up and best wishes to all those living in fear of the HV's scales.

Oh no, I completely understand the pressure hvs put on mothers, I don't dispute that at all. Gawd, a baby anything other than following a line and a lot of them start flapping. I've seen it first hand.

It was more comments like 'why couldn't I manage a big baby' or saying everybody else had a 75th centile baby, why couldn't I or why was I inadequate. Believing that it somehow reflects inadequacy as a bfer is madness when you start assessing your child in terms of happiness, healthiness and developmental norms as opposed to figures on a chart.

And as to why you can feed a baby 10 times and it gains 3 oz and another feeds 10 times and gains 10oz, as others have said there's metabolism and also you never know how much milk is being transferred, how much is brought back up, speed at which they feed, how often they pause per feed, how much is digested and how much is pooed back out. The list of variables is immense. The constant in a healthy baby who is bfing effectively is that they take what they need.

It's horrid that women feel so undermined and in pursuit of something unattainable and so arbitrary in many ways.

And the charts aren't based on ff babies. They're based on a mix of all types of feeding. You can also request an exclusively bfed baby chart.