Health visitor / baby weight check

[Twinkletwinklelil]

ive not had any issues with my HVs up until now (or am I being unreasonable?)

my baby is 14months and I asked my Gp for some help as I thought he was losing a lot weight. He’d been quite unwell / sick from around 9 months, on and off. Gp suggested I get him weighed by HV and see how he is once he’s better. long story short he’s had 4-5 bouts of illness, 3 of which were sickness resulting in a&e. 2 were colds/teething.
we’re currently recovering from covid but he’s started eating much better come the new year! (Fingers crossed it continues)

hes EBF. Won’t take a bottle / cup of milk, not formula, cows or expressed. So I am still EBF - not an issue. He feeds 3-4 times a day if well, more if not, less if I’m at work. At night atm he’s up 2/3 times for a feed and goes back to sleep straight away, never been a massive issue.

anyway, I took him to get weighed today, he’s dropped one centile. She said they wouldn’t be worried unless he dropped 2. Fair enough.
but she then went on to say I need to up his calories (carbs more than anything) more snacks, more rice, pasta etc.

need to stop breastfeeding somehow, I can’t see how I would do this, nor am I ready to. I recall HVs being very supportive of BF’ing but now he’s over 1, is it frowned upon!?

he should be left alone in the night when he’s crying for a feed or I can give water.

no tv, no tablets (we try not to do this anyway but I made the point that he’s been with other kids and eats better when there is something on)

he should be eating the same as the family - which he does but gets bored so I tend to spoonfeed when he stops self feeding, until he says no - he also uses a spoon when he feels like it.

anyway, I’m not here to be judged harshly, we’re all doing our best. But I felt like she was a bit harsh with her responses/suggestions

oh the other thing was that we caught Covid coming back from holiday, her response was “well that’s what you get for going on a plane” lol OK then.

obviously any advice or reassurance would be great.

I suppose I’m just ranting mostly here.

Sound like a typical hv tbh. They can sometimes invent problems out of nothing! If you have no issues feeding in the night then keep doing it. No need to give up bf either if you're both happy to continue.

Eating independently takes time and your lo is still very young. You sound like you're doing great anyway

She sounds like a twit. Carry on doing what you're doing.

I'd ignore her.

What is her reasoning behind saying to increase his calories, but then also remove his night feeds? I'd understand if you wanted to stop feeding at night, but since you don't, what's the benefit?
It sounds like she's hoping that maybe by removing the night feeds, he'll then eat more during the day, but I'd say that's the wrong way round. It seems insane to leave a child hungry in the night when there is a potential concern about their weight. DD1 breastfed until she was over 2, and it naturally decreased as she ate more and more solids.

Thank you @dementedpixie and @Goawaytina ♥️

@CrispsandCheeseSandwich that was my thought exactly! Why would I refuse feeds when he gets calories that way? And to replace with water?!
he eats, he just gets bored quickly of self feeding, when we first started weaning him he LOVED it. Ate so well, and by himself. Just seems to have gone a bit all over the place since the sickness.

I also don’t know what would be good calorific foods for him - surely filling him with rice crackers and pasta isn’t the best way? (That was a suggestion from HV)