Oct 2007 - This little piggy had pureed butternut squash and a slice of pear...

[alicet]

Well thought I should start a new thread in time to link it on the old one!!!

Hi Choc

Ben is ok thanks, had a bit of a tough week with him, I think he has had a growth spurt as he has upped his milk again and having 10-11 ounces along with food seems to have slowed down again the past couple of days thank goodness. He has also been really cranky and crying lots which is not him at all, but I can't feel any teeth coming through. He has had a cold the past two days though which doesn't help. Some items of clothing he has been wearing are 12-18 months the arms are a little long but that's about it The HV is coming tomorrow to do his six month check (a month late ) not had him weighed for a month so will be interesting to see what he is now Oh and the past two days he has started sitting up, yesterday he did 3 seconds, today has been nearly 30 seconds

muppet - hope the christening goes well and I look forward to seeing the pictures.

J20 - Good luck on giving up smoking, keep going its the best thing you can do

Hello to everyone else

Hey everyone,
Hope you're all doing ok. Took Dylan to get weighed today, he'd put on 7 and a half oz in 2 weeks which is good for him, he's now 13lb 1oz. I was happy with this, he's a very little man but he's happy, healthy and he is putting on weighed even if slowly. Anyway, the HV was not so happy he is on the very bottom line on the centile chart now, was hovering just above it for a while. She said he's put on weight but is still very small overall and thought we should maybe see the doctor or a paediatric (sp?) nutritionist. She said she'd not been too concerned before as 'they all' assumed his weight problem was to do with me having problems bereastfeeding , well, I did have preoblems but always made sure he was fed enough by giving formula if he refused to bf and has been mix fed from 3 weeks so don't understand that one. She said now that he's been on formula exclusively for a month and he's no different she can see it wasn't the bf afterall??!! She also asked if there was any way he would take more than 6oz a bottle, thats the most he will take. I told her no, it has been a massive challenge to get him to even take 6oz never mind more, this annoyed me as if he would take more I would obviously give it to him . She then said 'he's never going to be a very big person, he's not going to be tall, how tall is his dad' I told her his dad is 5ft 8, not exactly tiny, she measured his height and he was just below the 9th centile for that, his weight was 9th centile when born so this was fine. She then asked the same thing she has asked us a thousand times before, have you tried a bigger teat on his bottle, I advised her he is on the fastest teat available for his bottle, the 6 month plus one and when we changed to it it made no difference what so ever to how much he drank. I told her there was really nothing more me and dh can do to get him to take more milk than he wants to drink and we have tried everything we can think of over the last 6 months, I told him we thought he was a happy little chap and have no concerns about him at all apart from his weight gain. She said we need to get him checked out as what happens to him now can affect him for the rest of his life .
So, now she says to keep a food diary for him and go back and see her in 2 weeks and she'll see where we can go from their with regards to the doc/nutritionist.
I'm just sooooo tired of worrying about his weight, everytime I go out and see people in the street they say 'oh isn't he cute, how old is he?' and when I tell them his age they ALWAYS say 'oh isn't he tiny/small/little' and I feel like shouting yes he is but is that all you can say about him? can't you just keep your thoughts to yourself? , it's a very sensetive subject.
I just feel like everytime we relax a bit and try to stop worrying about his weight one of the hv's gets all concerned and makes us stress about it again. I have feelings of guilt too, thinking it's my genes to blame for his size or that I've missed something major and somehow am just not feeding him enough but then I know there's nothing more I can do to get him to eat more... then I start thinking he's gonna be small when he goes to school and all the other kids will pick on him . Just feel sad and worried about him now. Dh says he thinks we should just go to the docs asap and discuss it with them to see what they think rather than waiting 2 weeks and then even if the doc says to do a food diary we can get her oppinion on the situation first.
Annnnnnnnnd take a breath! Sorry to everyone for the majorly me me me post, I just really needed to get this off my chest even if no one can be bothered to read it.
Any thoughts would be appreciated if you manage to get to the end of this

Dal - you are doing the very best you can by your ds. He is happy and healthy, so please don;t worry too much.
HV mostly in my experience don;t remember too much abt all the mums they see and just keep asking the same stupid, mostly obvious questions. It can be really bloody frustrating. Believe me, i know.

I'd say start the food diary now and go and see your GP asap, don;t wait 2 weeks; at least that way you won;t be wasting any time. It'll help to ease your mind even if they tell you to do the diary thing anyway and send you on your way.

My ds has started to refuse milk from a bottle but is happy to take food from a spoon. Since 6pm last night he has taken 4oz! And that was a struggle. I too am worried he will continue to lose weight if this carries on. Like yours Dal, the HVs just keep asking the same stupid questions and don;t offer advice that has actually worked!
After reading your post, i too am going to start a food diary.....

Dal big hugs to you (and of course we will read your post) , I am thinking of you and hope that if you do go to your dr that they are able to offer you some comfort and reassurance. I agree that the HV's don't remember whats happening with each baby they see and unfortunately due to the claim society we live in I sometimes feel that the advice they give is to cover them rather than realising that all babies are different and just letting you go with the flow. I know its really hard not to stress but do try and go with your own instincts if he is happy and healthy then that is the main thing. Also why do people think it is ok to comment on your baby in a way that they wouldn't speak about another adult??? Really winds me up too You wouldn't meet another adult in the street and say "wow your husbands so tiny" why say it to a mum! (sorry got into a bit of a rant there!)

Dal - you must be feeling so stressed by all of this - we only ever do the best as mummies, so your HV's comments can't help you at all, I feel very sorry for you. I agree with LBMM that you should start the food diary and see your GP now, then I think you have some semblance of control - ie you are doing this because you choose to, and not because your HV says you have to, IYSWIM. (also, if there weren't 'littler' babies or 'bigger' babies, we wouldn't have an average on the blooming charts would we?)
LBMM - It's such a struggle when they suddenly change their eating habits isn't it?
Muppet - your domestic goddess stories are putting me to shame, i should get on and make my place look presentable for once!
My news is I have at last found a childminder for DS when I go back to work ? I?m going to see her on Tuesday to sign all the paperwork ? so this is a great weight off my mind. Now I can write to work and agree a start date back with them, not that I want to leave DS, but I just want to get everything sorted so I can enjoy the summer with him. Hope you are all ok!

Thanks for the comments ladies, littlebigmansmum - can see how that would be stressfull, the whole refusing milk thing, hope he starts taking some more soon. Only thing I can suggest (which you've probably already done) is to give him high calorie food eg avocado mixed in with things and use butter and cream and whole milk and cheese etc in as much of his food as poss? ((((hugs))).
Polar - i'll try not top stress, I quite liked your rant though, sounds like me .

x posted strawberry - it is stressfull and worrying but I agree with all of you we should just 'take control' and see the doc asap ourselves.
Thats great you've found a childminder, must be a massive weight off your mind. Just out of interest how much roughly do childminders cost? I don't want to go back to work for a while but it all depends on money so may have to.

Hi dal - the childminders around here were alot cheaper than I had imagined - about £3.50 an hour. I'm going back for 3 days a week (I hope), and working longer days to keep my hours up (ie more money), so I'll drop DS off about 8am, and DH will pick him up between 5-6pm, so quite long days for him there, and it will cost us just over £100 a week. Which sounds a lot, but I can earn more than that by going back, so I have to really. And the CM seems really nice - she takes them out to toddler groups and the park, and they go shopping to the supermarket with her, as well as playing with toys and doing crafts. So all the kinds of things I would do with him if I was there...

Sounds like you've found a really nice childminder sounds like she's not too expensive either. Bet DS will love all the activities

Dal-silly cow hv, imo the whole point of there being the centiles is that some babies are on the lower ones, some are on the higher ones, some are in the middle! thats the whole point of having the chart isn't it, iyswim. dd1 is something like on the 93rd centile and while she's quite chubby, she isn't obese, and being that high tends to suggest that she's massive, it really pisses me off the way they work these things out! so what if he's one of the lower ones, he may shoot up at any time, try not to stress about it, hope i haven't made it worse by jabbering on. with regards to getting the milk down him, just use the milk to make up his food, baby porridge can soak quite a lot of the milk up, out of interest, how much milk are you getting down him?

oh forgot to say Neil told me i was too much of a flirt for him to have a relationship with me! moi!! anyhow, i'm meant to be meeting someone else for coffee this afternoon that i met on the hen night, so i need to get sorted for that, sorry for not replying to anyone else xx

ooh i think i got a bit mixed up with dal and lbbm's post then, sorry.

J20 - don't know if you were asking me or LBMM but Dylan averages 25oz a day.

Hi Dal so sorry to hear of your HV's comments. We had this with Ollie when he was a baby. He was 9lb 1oz and on the 75th line. We got to 12 weeks fine and he then just plummeted down the percentiles and finally hovered around the 25th and sometimes just above the 9th. We had the same thing with the health visitor asking questions all the time wanting to see him and finally scaring me with the threat of the peaditrician also. I really don't think this helped with my state of mind too. I asked what she thought was wrong and she couldn't give an answer just that if the next time she saw us he hadn't settled on the 9th/25th line then she would refer us to a paed. I was petrified to say the least. I tried to get him to have more food but he was already eating loads, drinking lots of milk and doing everything else fine this was very hard to do.
We waited for that final HV app in vitual terror (not joking I had PND and was finding the lack of control over most of my life terrifying let along the constant worry over what was happening with Ollie) DH came with me. The HV was on long term sick and a new HV was in place who asked 'does he eat/drink? Does he move a lot/is he active? Is he growing? Is he regularly weeing/pooing?' We said yes to all and she said he was fine and there was no problem at all. She looked at me - 5" 3" and size 10 and Dh taller and bigger and said that I obviously ate well in pregnancy and had a healthy sized baby that was going to be a much slighter build that his intial birthweight indicated. (My brother is 6" 6" and very slightly built)

After that I didn't take him to be weiged as it was far to stressful....

It took Ollie nearly a year to get to 20lbs and Henry is there already at 24 weeks!

I have the opposite with Henry. A lady the other day said in a totally shocked voice 'Wow, isn't your baby enormous!' when looking at Henry. I was a little shocked to say the least!
Henry is big and always has been. He's in 12-18 month clothes even though the legs/arms are a little long and have to be turned up he is so wide! I have difficulty putting his coat on him as he's so broad. I was totally panicked about getting to 12 weeks as I was convinced that he was going to drop off like Ollie. He didn't and although has dropped off the 91st percentile he is just underneath it.

I have 2 boys who seem to have the exact opposite body shapes. 1 is a slim jim who has never filled his clothes and we have problems with his waist and even wore his shorts for summer 2 years running! And the other is a large boy who is very wide (like daddy!) and is way ahead of his age in clothes.

I would take him to the Drs, get a clean bill of health and then try not to worry although I know that's really difficult.

Ben is the same Muppet, wearing some 12-18 month clothes but with long arms Just waiting for the HV to come and weigh Ben, she was due at half past ten and he is now crying for food

I read that LLL, it's weird for me to have one that is ahead in his clothes age! Ollie, from about 16 weeks never really wore his age clothes. He was long -lovely long legs! but he's got such a tiny waist and if he gets ill he's like me in that he looses his appetite and starts to loose weight quickly. When he had this horrible rota virus (vomiting/dihorrea (sp?) bug. Nasty, nasty thing we all got) we could see his ribs as he'd not eaten properly for 5 days. It was awful.

I also seem to be constantly buying clothes for H as he's growing so fast. I am assuming this will slow down once he's mobile -if he can ever be bothered!

Dal, yes it was you i was asking, thats quite a lot, i struggle to get 21 into Shannon, my hv said as long as they get 20 oz a day thats fine, also, have just seen your pic on fb and you're quite petite yourself aren't you? try not to worry, as long as he's happy and healthy, he's fine, my friends little boy is tiny for his age, but he's the loudest most popular boy in his class.
Muppet and Lisa, wow at 12-18 months, saying that fatty Shannon's in 9-12 months, i think she's quite big for a girl, and i had problems with dd1s waist being too small for everything when she was little, i had to unpick everthing and tighten the elastic, now i struggle to get anything to go round her, i buy 11-12 for her and she's 8.

not going on the date now, i've rearranged for tomorrow, couldn't be bothered!

Having thought about it, Henry has 4 x 9oz bottles a day and drains them. Breakfast of weetabix, fruit/baby rice, lunch vegatbles/fruit pudding, dinner vegetables/fruit pudding.

I give the milk before the soilds, what does everyone else do?

Thanks for reassurance muppet, it's comforting to know someone else has been through a simila situation, it's hard to know who to listen to and what to do. It's not like I can say he's eating loads but still not putting on weight cause he's taking a good amount of milk but the food is not so good, 1st two weeks he ate anything we gave him but now suddenly he's not interested in food at all and it takes a massive amount of encouragement just to get him to open his mouth and even when he's tasted the food he doesn't open his mouth for another spoon, just can't be bothered at all. I'm worried that if I keep a food diary they'll says his weight gain isn't good cause he's not taking a lot of food but it's been like this since 8 weeks not just since weaning started. I've tried mixing cream and butter into his food for extra calories but this is useless if he won't even eat it . Tried to get a docs appointment today but all booked up so will have to try again tomorrow, they have a silly system where you have to call at 8.30am except it's engaged cause everyone tries to call then when you finally get through all the appointments are gone!.
He's still mostly in 0-3 month clothes, only just starting to fit some og his 3-6 month clothes, kind of in between the 2 sizes at the moment. He is slowly getting longer, I thought he was quite long but hv measured only on 9th centile for length.
J20 - yes I am quite petite, or should that be was until I ate too much chocolate , my dh was very skinny as a baby (although you wouldn't think so to look at him now) and I was a skinny child, I told the HV this and she just kind of dismissed it as though she thought I was grasping at straws.
Muppet - you commeted your brother is slight and tall, both mine are, one's 5ft 9 and the other is 6ft 2 and are both skinny and can eat whatever they want and not put on weight , my mum also used to be skinny and could eat what she wanted, was 7 and a half stone when she got married , has put on weight since having us 3 and getting an underactive thiroid problem though. Dh's dad is skinny too...I think all this contributes as it's in this genes.

Dylan has 5 5oz bottles, although sometimes he'll only take a 4 but then take a 6 so it balances out iyswim, always give his bottle before food and even leave a bit of a gap between the bottle and the food of 15 mins-30 mins so he's not too full from his milk. Breakfast is usually baby rice and fruit puree or greek yogurt with fruit or a crushed rusk with milk. Lunch is usually a vegetable puree eg sweet potato,carrot,buternut squash,etc. We only offer food twice a day and as he's not really eating that at the moment we're not going to offer any more meals yet.

Hello lovely ladies!

Sorry not been about for a while - no excuses really! Have a chance to catch up today though as Adam is in nursery all day. Feel really wobbly baout it actually and not at all pleased at having a day to myself which if you had asked me a month ago I would have been really looking forward to!

Muppet hope H's christening goes well on Sunday and that the il's wind their necks in! And sod the fact it's a bank holiday - just tell them to go on Sunday! You know the odd comment like 'it will be so nice to have a bit of family time just the 4 of us on Sunday evening after such a busy weekend!' Nice one about 3rd child too and also Austria being off!

Dal Adam had a poo with the blackstrandy bits you describe shortly after starting weaning. No idea what it was but he was fine and it's not happened since!

Anyasmum great news on her measurements!

J2O good luck with stopping smoking! Neil's loss too - have fun on your coffee date

Polar glad Zoe's sleeping has improved or rather that it's not bothering you so much as she can happily party on her own!

Choc I know what you mean about your priorities changing! With Sam I had been adamant he owuld be in his own bed from the start and that him being in our room never mind our bed would be my worst nightmare... Cut to 7am the day after he came home from hospital and we brought him into our bed as neither dh or I had had any sleep. And I loved it!!

Lisa sorry to hear Ben's been a bit cranky of late - he seems to be such a happy little chap usually I think that makes it harder when they're not doesn't it?

Dal so sorry you're having all the worry about Dylam's weight. I am sure you are right - he's just going to be a little chap and they're worrying for nothing. I think it would be worth you going to see your GP though to see if they're in agreement. Try not to let this make you more anxious than you already are about his solids too - if you are stressed he will pick up on it. He's not quite 6 months yet either is he so actually any solids he is getting will be more than some babies his age - just try (easier said than done I know!) to relax and it will all happen given a bit of time....

Strawberry great news about finding a childminder you're happy with! Takes such a weight off your mind doesn't it?

Anyway off out now to get some bits and pieces - we're away for the weekend for a wedding and staying at dh's parents on Fri and Sun (boys there on Sat). SO might not get to post until after the weekend.... Hope you're all doing well and I'll try and get on a bit more although starting work next week is going to relaly curb my social life

Just going to respond to Dal's post ... will catch up with everybody else later!

As somebody has already said, the centiles are there because somebody is on all of them ...your hv is worrying unecessarily: as muppetgirl said - is he active? is he weeing / pooing? if yes, then there's no problem ... honestly, I really think some hvs need some serious retraining!

As for getting more solids into him - babies are supposed to be ex. on milk for 6 months ... the food between 6 months and 1 year are supposed to be complimentary - not to replace milk feeds: the calories they get from a little milk cannot be achieved by eating solids - they just can't get the bulk!

Try easing off on the food - if you are stressed, then he will be: try putting some finger foods on his tray when you are eating - or put something in his hand. He may not be ready to start on solid food yet - especially if he's small!

I know you're not bf, but there's some really useful (evidence-based, not hv out of date opinion based) information on starting solid food on their website here here, and here

have time, so will say to others ...

alice - good luck with going back to work - enjoy your baby-free day today!

j20 - neil's loss!

strawberry - glad you found a good cm - they are worth their weight in gold!

muppetgirl - hope the christening goes really well - second the others - tell the ils to bog off!

No real news from me ... Rhydian has got slapped cheek, MIL was very civil to me last week when they came up - Mairwen screaming at her every time mil picked her up has completely changed her attitude to me ... she actually asked if she could pick Mairwen up! ... and, (get this), she was full of compliments for the way we are feeding Mairwen ... quote: "It's amazing that she eats so well, it's so much easier than doing all those purées. This is obviously why you waited til 6 months" I was ... and not just a little bit !

Going to a LLL meeting this morning - may walk - it's a lovely walk across country ...

Have a good weekend all ... love to all - especially those I haven't mentioned (including Mine, who's new name I can't remember!)

Ben passed his 6 month check with flying colours, he is doing some things that 10-11 month olds are doing He is now 20lb 11ounces, 72.5cm tall and his head circumference is 46cm which is on the 75th percentile, he is on the 91st for height and between 75 and 91 for his weight He is starting to sit up quite well now too, when he isn't throwing himself backwards that is

Dal - you should ignore your HV and go by what people have said on here. My friends little boy is one next thursday and Ben is bigger and heavier than him but her lo is fab, just never liked milk very much, he eats like a demon now though

hi folks
just curious..... is the six month check a standard thing.....??

I'm not sure whether it is the same everywhere, but Sam had a check at 6mths, and 2 1/2 years from what I can remember just to make sure everything is progressing as it should

ok. we didn't get one but i wonder if i have to ask for it at the baby clinic....??