Baby's weight announcements

[FirstBabyLateJuly]

Hi all,
I'm expecting our first baby in late July and I've got this thing about people knowing the baby's weight if I manage a vaginal birth: it seems like people use knowing the weight only to 1) Assess (in their view) how easy/difficult the birth must have been, 2) Assess the baby's health. Both of which I don't particularly want everyone speculating about, as it doesn't seem any of their business! Does anyone else feel like this or is it just me? Am considering not telling anyone at all!
Thanks

I guarantee every person who you tell or enquires about your lovely new baby will want to know 3 things:

Name
Sex
Weight

I understand its really none of their business if you don't want to let know but it might be easier to say 7lb 6oz or whatever it is, rather than get into a whole spiel about how its not relevant to them.

My DH let everyone know via text anyway, and that was about the only mention of it at all.

Not something I ever thought about, and this is my 3rd, and if anyone has ever judged birth quality or health they haven't done it in earshot to be honest. The only time I have ever heard anyone comment about weight is when someone I worked with had a 14lbr and people looked shocked and asked if it was natural, but after that nothing was mentioned.

I wouldn't worry about it too much but if you don't want to tell you don't have to.

I felt EXACTLY the same during pregnancy and my mum and DH thought I was mad. I assumed, being very tall and quite well built that I'd have a whopper of a baby (10lb at least) and that if i managed a vaginal birth people would be thinking about me pushing it out. I was 100% NOT ever going to tell the weight to anyone.

Then I had a 7lb 9oz little girl and i didn't mind telling everyone what she weighed. I agree with paschaelina that it's much easier to say. They won't be thinking about your vagina or the baby's health. It's just something people need to know for some reason!

But i can't bear it when people say "weighing in at..." makes me think of boxers or cattle. Not for babies.

To be honest, the only way you can really picture a baby is by its weight at that age!

I can't say I have deep admiration for women with whopping babies! As my midwife said, it's not the weight it's the size of the head!

I don't think people think about how your birth was - if they want to know they'll ask how it was. I always ask the weight, especially now I have dd1 (3). When I hold a newborn and the mum tells me they're 8lbs I find it hard to think that dd was smaller!

A friend of mine had a baby weighing 11lbs 13oz - not once did it occur to me to speculate about her birth until she told me the details. Then I wasn't speculating just sympathising as she had a tough time due to other factors rather than just baby's weight.

As diggingintheribs suggests - it helps people visualise a baby when they know the weight. I certainly have never judged any woman on her birth nor the health of her baby based on weight

I agree - I've often gone 'ouch' if I hear of a big (ie 10lb+) baby but I've never thought 'she had it easy' of someone with a tiny baby.

My 3 have got smaller - I started at nearly 9lb and #3 was 7lb. The 7lber was the hardest.

Do what you want - it's your baby!

It does help people who want to buy some clothes as a present decide what size to buy. Newborns do vary a lot so it can be quite hard otherwise.

the thing is, people know how important having a baby is to you, and so they want to talk to you about it because they care, but there's not really a lot to say about a newborn beyond sex, name and weight. People don't really care how much your baby weighs, they'll forget the number very quickly, they just want to talk to you about the most important thing in your life atm.

if you really don't want them to know then just tell them the weight in kg and claim you don't know it in lb. no one understands kg when it comes to babies!

I agree with TheSecondComing tbh. Sorry.

My first two were 9 and 10lbs and I had them naturally with no problems at all. If anyone thinks I have a fanjo like a wizards sleeve, they've never told me as much and I couldn't care less if they did anyway tbh. My third son was 6lb 14 1/2, so tiny compared to the first two, but no-one made any adverse comments.

I agree it makes it easier for people to buy baby clothes if they want to.

I was flummoxed after everyone kept asking me. I could barely remember myself and I couldnt understand why they wanted to know. Now it's the first thing I ask other people!

I feel a bit put out when people proudly announce they had a natural birth but that's sour grapes on my part cos l didnt.

I agree with RobynLou, I don't think that people ask the weight because they are even very interested, it's just somehow become one of the standard questions to be asked on hearing that someone has had a baby. I doubt it is useful for either visualization or clothes sizes to be honest unless the baby is either very big or very small. My two were on the small side (6 11 and 6 13) but both were long and moved up clothes sizes very quickly. Strangely no one asks the length of babies, although this is also measured at birth.

Mine were both enormous, and I told everybody the weights. I wasn't going to miss out on a single awestruck "Wow"!

If you don't tell people the baby's weight it will just draw more attention to yourself and make the situation (of how much he/she weighs) into a much bigger deal than it is. I agree that it's a bit random that people always want to know, but I think it's just because people are excited for you and they want all the details. I would never make assumptions based on size - a friend of mine had a 10 lb baby and it all went smoothly, whereas some people I know who had difficult births had 7 or 8lb babies, the weight doesn't really matter in that sense.

My second baby was 11lbs 14oz at birth. He was 11 days late but we had NO idea he would be so big. I'm glad they didn't know as I know people who've been forced to have ELCS because of a high weight estimate.

I was treated like a celebrity on the ward - at the start of each new shift another lot of MWs would peek in to see the monster baby (who was jaundiced and had low blood sugar, both of which were related to his size in a way). It really got me through the first few days with the hormone crash etc, all these strangers (other patients too) saying "WOW!!! How did you do it?!" etc, really boosted my ego. Soon lots of locals knew too as my DH ran the village pharmacy at the time. I was "that lady who had the enormous baby"

However I came down to earth with a bump when I found out that bigger babies are actually easier to push out :o

Just don't answer them. Doesn't really matter if it draws attention to it, does it?

I can't explain it, but I sometimes don't like the intrusion and feel that frankly, beyond a 'he/she's born safely' the details are off limits. The details are boring anyway to anyone else. Why would you want to know.

There are only a few people I would tell about the birth of my second and to be honest no one would ask about her weight. With my first I did feel prompted to tell people as she was born at 8 months. But I can't recall it being a big deal. People never even asked whether it was natural or section.

I am a curmudgeon with very few mum friends and basically no family apart from my mother, so I will never have a clucking brood of relatives asking when it's due, have I had it, how was it, etc. I don't use facebook or twitter so wouldn't announce it there either.

Don't know why, but it annoyed me when my neighbour asked the sex of our baby of my husband. And then told him she was 'sorry, you wanted a boy, didn't you'. The berk.

Go incommunicado, like me!

seeker you can't leave it at that....do tell I promise to "wow!"

And OP sorry I agree with TSC. People are just making polite conversation an relating it with their own experiences. I actually think that is rather nice

I can sort of understand where OP is coming from. My side of the family have always had 'nice, big healthy babies', the women always seemed to congratulate themselves for having grown a big baby... 'very good placentas' .

My husbands side all had small babies and declared large babies to be 'unnatural' and almost acted as though a large baby would turn into a fat adult

Consequently I felt rather caught in the middle as it wasn't exactly anything I had any control over and I was bound to disappoint someone -it used to drive me mad when anyone mentioned babies weights! Felt rather smug when I produced a baby that was bang on average

Thanks all - I suppose it's just that I've heard numerous remarks in the past along the lines of 'Ooh 9 and a half lbs you poor thing' in the past...which obviously is based on an assumption (correct or otherwise) that the baby's larger weight made things difficult.

And I don't want people making that mental connection in such a very intimate and personal thing - it's not as if in any other medically-related arena you have to give any details at all (size of hip replacement, as a random example!), so why should you in this?
I'm just tiring of all the speculation in general - it's a boy/girl, it's a big 'un/small 'un. I know people are only interested because they care. Most people (well colleagues in particular) I really like and would have no problem with them knowing pretty much anything, however there are just a couple of individuals whose knowledge of anything to do with my private life I want to severely limit, and this is probably colouring my judgement a bit! :)

And PS - 'because everyone else does it' has never been a reason to do something in my book ;)

i don't like this at all... i am having a small baby and i am small, and i dont want relatives who had 10 lbs babies to judge me... i will not send weight announcements, no one's business

good for you, Lily.

I had my first child in Singapore. She was never going to be a whopper (I'm small myself) but she was also early and I had preeclampsia and the tutting, gasping and 'is she alright-ing' that I got from Chinese aunties who all favour and prize massive off the charts baby boys totally did my head in when I was struggling to establish breastfeeding.

Even had friends saying 'well, of course you want a baby to be more than the 75 centile as then you know they are healthy', before realising that I was sat there with my 10th centiler.

Society favours a 'bonny' fat baby as well as doing a knowing gasp when they hear about the birth of a particularly big one.

So actually, weight (of babies, as well as of adults) can run deeper than is apparent and weight in infants as they feed can be riven with anxieties at both ends of the scale.

I like to sidestep the issue entirely. It's a matter for me, my husband and our immediate family and HCPs.

"however there are just a couple of individuals whose knowledge of anything to do with my private life I want to severely limit, and this is probably colouring my judgement a bit!"

I can really relate to this.