Help me fatten up my BLW baby

[HellomynameisIcklePickle]

Well, he doesn't really need fattening up but I just don't know how to get more calories into him. He's relatively tall for his age - he is 10 months but in 12-18 month clothes. But he is less than 25% for weight although he's obviously healthy.

His typical diet is

Breakfast: A mound of shreddies or porridge, an apple and a Yeo valley yoghurt

Lunch: Cooked chicken pieces, half a Philadelphia sandwich, blueberries and red grapes

Dinner: spag bol, some cooked veg, a yoghurt.

Lately I've been given him a yoghurt at lunch too as he's still hungry.

If it was up to the baby he'd have bread every meal but I do try to limit it because of salt and how healthy it is. I'm not sure whether I should let up on that and let him have more toast/sandwiches?

He has an allergy to eggs so although I am not excluding it absolutely from his diet I do try to not give him eggy things like pancakes (which is a shame because he loved them!) He's not very good at eating rice or mashed potato or things that are too saucy.

He's breast fed and has 7 big feeds a day and he's really good with his BLW but like most people I'm getting into a little bit of a rut. All our dairy is high fat and we cut salt out wherever possible.

As I was thinking of this post I realised I could be adding more potato - via new potato and sweet potato into his diet and maybe a bit more banana.

Any other suggestions? He'll try anything although he has cycles of what he enjoys and is better at eating some foods than others.

Thank you for your reply geeka. I'm not panicked by what you say, you are right after all. I always say "he is all ribs and chicken legs", always been big for his age and always in the next size up in clothes. He dropped down from 50% - 25% and I wanted to help him through this growth spurt, I think his feeding has calmed down slightly now.

Geek at 10 mths those fats as you have said should be coming from milk and milk is still the dominant food source at that age. I personally think the advice you gave would have to be coming from a health professional concerned about the babies weight rather than the internet because in my opinion it is pretty extreme. If a child is so underweight that it needs all or a large combination of those fats added to its diet then I think it should be done with medical supervision but I do not think this is the case as the OP has given any real cause for concern and if she is concerned I would speak to a HV.

I am curious about that 2% centile difference between weight and height as I have not seen it before. I know my dsis 2 children were and are on the 99th centile for height and well below the 25% centile for weight all their lives so far and when they lived in the US under the care of paed as all children are there was never any major concerns raised as they were perfectly healthy.

another - babies should be consuming all these fats anyway. The only difference is the proportion consumed as part of a healthy, varied diet.

2 centile difference between height (or, more properly for a baby, length) and weight in an otherwise healthy baby reflects low body fat. A discrepancy that's appropriate for an adult or older child is not ok in a baby because so much of a baby's weight is actually from the head. For example, my weight is over 3 centile widths below my height (i.e., I'm tall and thin) but I definitely have fat reserves! A lanky older child could have the same proportion and be ok as well. But a baby with weight 3 centiles below length would be quite underweight and it should be picked up by HV / GP.

If the children you mention really had 99th centile for height and 25th for weight while they were babies, then it would be extremely unusual for a paediatrician to be blasé about it. Possible, but unusual, and as an individual case it shouldn't be broadly applied.

Geek that is really interesting about the 2% difference I never heard it. If a child is on the 99 th centile for height that means they need to be on the 97th centile for weight or else they do not have the correct proportion of body fat is that it? I would have thought it was extremely common for children to be on different centiles for weight and height I know mine would be too but nothing nearly as extreme as my sisters 2.

OP the best book I ever read on this topic is by a Spanish paed Carlos Gonzalez 'My child won't eat' it has lots if information about the various stages of child nutrition and it is fascinating. I must go through it again and look for the centiles thing it is ages since I read it.

another - no, it's 2 centiles not 2 percentage points. So height on the 99.6th centile would have weight on the 91st centile if they were 2 centile widths apart. Or height on the 98th centile would have weight on the 75th centile at 2 centiles apart, and so on.

So babies don't have to be exactly matched for weight and height, just within the same ballpark. The "same ballpark" is a matter of judgement, though, so the max of 2 centile widths is one way. Many paediatricians are more conservative in not liking to see a difference of more than one centile between height and weight. Older children can have their BMI calculated, but - rightly or wrongly - there's a real reluctance in the UK to use BMI for babies (even though the WHO has produced age-adjusted BMI charts from birth).

Btw, I agree that the Carlos Gonzalez book is great. I've recommended it on mn before. He also notes that it's important to consider height as well as weight, though he doesn't explain his preferred method of deciding whether weight is appropriate for a particular height.

Ah geek I see thanks for that I get it.

ickle are you offering oily fish too? Salmon is pretty calorie dense, maybe try salmon fish finger, stir fry or salmon cakes. Sardines on today were a big hit here too

Are you offering smooth nut butters too? If you use the smooth ones there shouldn't be any risk of choking and its unlikely he will have an allergy.

Thanks so much everyone. It seems he was having a growth spurt and feeding has resumed to normal levels now! I was just totally perplexed as to how he could eat 3 yoghurts after a full dinner. Lots of advice to see me through it and carry on and help him maintain his healthy weight