Why is my 15 month old so fat?

[Skatingonthinice16]

She's 82cm and 35lbs.

She has a weetabix for breakfast with an ounce and a half of breast milk.
She has a sandwich with cheese spread or peanut butter for lunch - only one piece of bread - and then some fruit which she loves.
For dinner she usually has jacket potato with cheese / beans, some chicken / fish / turkey with some potato and vegetables, some tomato pasta or sometimes an omelette. Pudding she has some more fruit.

For a snack she does like the organix carrot stick crisps or fruit. She occasionally has a biscuit.

But she still has about 600mls of breast milk a day. I know this because I'm expressing for her and she drinks every thing I express which is between 550-600mls a day.
Is this why she's so fat?
I'm sure my son ate more than this at this age and although weighed similar he was taller - about 90cm - his dad is very tall and now aged 7 my son is skinny but in age 11 clothes which are huge round the middle but anything smaller flap around his ankles!

My daughter has just started walking independently but will walk for about two hours just holding one of my hands. She rarely uses the pushchair now.

I'm a bit concerned as to why she's so big?

I would like like to gradually wind down the expressing now and finish by the time she is 18 months. We are going on holiday at the end of May and I've already expressed through two holidays and frankly it is hugely restrictive and incredibly hard work. It also affects my son as we can't go anywhere for longer than a few hours...
If I could just express 6am, 10am, 6pm, 10pm I'd carry on a while longer but given that my supply has already dropped I'm currently having to do 2am and 2pm as well.

Why are you expressing so much?! I would definitely drop 2am one at the very least! If she wants more milk she can have cows milk surely? But 14oz is way more than my 2.3 year old has. She has one bottle at bedtime which is about 7oz. I think this huge amount is your issue. It's surely damaging your quality of life to be expressing all the time and I don't really see the need for it? Especially as you're concerned about her weight. Her food intake seems perfectly fine so I think you need to reduce her milk.

Does it matter if your supply starts to drop a bit at this point? If you were feeding and not expressing those feeds would be dropped anyway, and your supply would drop accordingly.
At that age I was doing a morning and bedtime feed.

I just think if my supply dropped to like 10oz or less it wouldn't be worth it?

Is it worth making your life difficult, expressing so much just to overfeed your toddler? Being obese isn't healthy.

10oz of milk is a totally normal amount for a 1 year old to drink. That plus milk on cereal, cheese and yoghurt will provide all she needs.

10oz for a 1 year old seems like a normal amount of milk to drink, when combined with cheese/yoghurt etc. Completely up to you though obviously! It just sounds very very restrictive, especially as you're still waking in the night to pump.

Edenx your wrong to call this child obese. She is 15 months old and only just mobile.

You cannot call an only just mobile 15 month old obese. That's ridiculous.

Regardless of age, if this child's weight is off the charts then she is obese unfortunately.

Are you sure she really weighs that much? That's the same as my almost 3 year old. TBH I would carry on with BF and see your GP.

For goodness sake, you need to ignore rubbish advice about restricting intake of a baby. Speak to your health visitor- many GPs are not baby experts and won't have the underpinning baby nutrition experience. GPs are for ill babies - Health Visitor better for well baby.

My youngest was round as a baby. Thrush in between the creases of her leg fat rolls. She was a chubby toddler but rapidly changed body shape as she grew. She's 18 now, 5ft nothing and a size 4. Skinny as a rake despite being on 95th centile for as long as I could be bothered to measure her. She's never dieted, never had restricted intake it's just the way she developed.
Heavy breastfed babies tend not to be obese as children. You don't sound like you are filling her with junk. Trust yourself.

There is a risk of overfeeding with bottle feeding.

upsidedownapplecake I'm well aware of the health benefits of BM and I know it cannot be compared to a Mars Bar - I was trying to give context about the amount of calories contained in this baby's last bottle. Yes all babies are different but I do think OP's DD is large and the reason is that she is taking in a huge amount of calories - close to 500 - from milk alone.

Expressed breast milk is not 'bottle feeding' per se. You can overfeed with formula but rarely with breast milk.
Cows milk is not designed for babies and would not be better than breast milk.
Lots of healthy babies are large. Speak to your health visitor rather than taking advice from an online forum.

35lbs you say. How and where was she weighed? What size clothes does she wear?

It's great that she's still taking a good volume of breast milk, loads of benefits for both of you. HUGE respect for expressing this whole time. Crikey! Winding that down should absolutely be based on what suits you both best, certainly not on misplaced advice about over feeding.

You can overfeed with bottles because of the way the milk is delivered - it doesn't matter if it is breast or formula milk in the bottle.

How and where was she weighed and measured? I meant.

Doing it at home is generally utterly unreliable.

At 14mo it would be good to move to a cup away from bottles.
My ds had about 100ml in a tomee tipped cup at bedtime at that age.
I'd try to get her drinking smaller amounts in a cup from now - I'm not an expert but I'd guess in my experience my ds was only having about 100ml from the boob up to 13mo when we swapped to the cup.

I have scales here. Baby scales. They've always weighed her to within a couple of grams of the HV ones so I assume accurate.

She is in 18-24 months and occasionally 2-3.

My ds is 21 months today and i weighed him and he is 14.9kg and has just went into 2-3. He was 11lb when he was born so hes always been on the big side but hes in proportion fo his age and height (he is 3ft just about)

You are a super hero for expressing that much! I expressed at 2am for a few months and it is brutal. To still be doing it now, as well as several other times a day, is amazing!

I am no expert, but that seems a lot of breast milk for a child her age to be having. Breast milk is very calorific, and a baby drinking it from the breast would typically be drinking smaller amounts at a time. Maybe try moving from a bottle to a cup and she'll probably drink less of her own accord. My gut feel is she probably doesn't need the morning milk either if she is having milk in her weetabix.

You must be able to see that this is unusual...why is it so important to you to keep your supply up so much? It should naturally drop off as your child needs less to supplement their diet of solids. But you are artificially maintaining yours through expressing and overfeeding your child to the point that her weight is off the charts

Yy, consider dropping the 2am expressing and early bottle. Supply should be well enough established by now to be fine on 3 a day. If that'd suit you, of course.

At your child's age, both my "big for their age" kids were breastfeeding only once a day. Not overweight/obese, but love their food. I think you can safely cut down the expressed milk.

What an odd post LspinROse.
[[http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/pumping/milkcalc/]] (a widely respected do source of information on all thing BF,) says the amount of BM OP is giving is pretty much spot on average requirement for the age of her DD:

"average breastmilk intake to be 30 oz per day (875 ml/day; 93% of total intake) at 7 months and 19 oz (550 ml/day; 50% of total energy intake) at 11-16 months."

"Several studies have measured breastmilk intake for babies between 12 and 24 months and found typical amounts to be 14-19 oz per day (400-550 mL per day). Studies looking at breastmilk intake between 24 and 36 months have found typical amounts to be 10-12 oz per day (300-360 mL per day)."