CM CLUB - taking mindee to HV tomorrow, going to discuss weight, advice needed please.....

[looneytune]

Hi all

One of my lovely mindees has caused much concern for her mum due to her size. She's a lovely 13 month old who happens to be very small. She looks fine i.e. not skinny, just not chubby and her body is in praportion, she just happens to be very small. What doesn't help is that my now 7 month old ds2 is bigger than her and so it's getting more and more obvious about her not growing very fast.

Anyway, had the poor mum in tears again this morning after a trip to the Drs (not to do with weight but had stopped mindee eating so sort of came into conversation). Dr has suggested mindee is weighed again and because I know what a state the mum gets in about this stuff, I offered to take her up to weigh in tomorrow and she said she's like me to do that. So, I'm going to be seeing the Health Visitor in the morning and am unsure how to handle it all?

I went with ds2 a little while back and the HV questioned me about mindee and asked if we could arrange for her to visit the mum at home which she did. It's just that time passes and I suppose we all worry that everything is ok. Poor mum

Can you think of anything I should say/not say? Any advice would be great

Meant to say that mindee was always small (she started with me at 8 wks so I know!). Also mindee is very active so that's not a problem. She was walking at 10 months and so is all over the place like the other toddlers!

i understand that you are trying to help the mum and mindee but i'm not sure of the ethics of this...

are you saying that you went a while ago with YOUR child and HV asked you about mindee? Dont you have a duty of confidentiality here? And shouldn't Hv be arranging vists directly with the mum, not through you?

and surely Hv woudl need the parenst written permission to weigh mindee without parenst being present? And what if the HV asks you about the child, do you have the parents permission to pass on info?

sorry if I've got it wrong here. hopefully a Cm will come along soon and advise you

Just tell HV what you know and write down any facts she gives you. She may ask you things like 'how tall are mindees parents'?, 'birth weight', etc. Make sure you have all the info and maybe take mindees red book with you.

If everyone is happy with looneytune talking to the HV then what's the problem? I've taken my charge to the doctors and speech therapist etc before.

Looney - i took one of mine to speech therapy drop in. i had to get the parent to sign a little form i'd done on pc saying that the parent gave me permision to take lo there. They were fine with it, salt was too, the salt then rang mum to tell of outcomes. Mum very apreciative as did not have to take time off work.

i think you're lovely to offer as mum is obv distressed by it. caould she perhaps come with you? or offer to go with her next time she goes to doc? is the mum small build? one of dd's friends has always been petite as is mum (size 8). it may not be anything to worry about but worth getting wieghed to see.

KristinaM - I didn't give all the details of the chat with the HV as it wasn't relevant to this question but as you've asked......I go to toddler groups most days and one of the groups I used to go to (swapped now) has HV in there so I asked if mum would mind me getting ds2 weighed as I hadn't been able to get him weighed as started back cming when he was 10 wks old. Anyway, she asked if I could get her weighed at the same time so I did and then the HV started asking questions and asked me to call the mum so I did. Did I do something wrong there? Her mum was fine with me as didn't do anything behind her back

HSMM - thanks for that, will do. I've already asked mum to bring red book tomorrow.

tankie - exactly. I don't come on MN as much as I used to for this very reason of people mis-understanding threads or reading too much into things that aren't the actual question.

EllieM - hello I'll get something in writing then although last time they were fine but you just never know. Her mum would have gone another day when I only have her til 2.30pm but I know she hates all this as she gets really upset so I just offered and she was grateful and would rather I did it mainly because she doesn't want to end up in tears I think. So if she was going to go at all, she'd just go on her own. She is a very busy lady (own business) so wouldn't be able to come tomorrow. I personally think everything is fine and her mum is smallish and told me they have some 4ftish family members so it's probably fine but I can understand her just wanting to check again. Doesn't help that she gets lots of comments about her size, as do I!!

Thanks again for your help