Anxious over babies weight gain

[maa1992]

Hi,

Bit of background? Baby was exclusively bf until he was 4 months but was severely underweight and hospitalised, we tried combo feeding but ultimately it didn't work out and hospital advised we moved onto formula - I'm including this because I'm so terrified about him being hungry or me over feeding him

Since then he's come on amazing, got up to a healthy weight. He's 6 months, we started weaning three weeks ago and he's doing great. Loves his food, we're doing a combination of baby led and traditional.

However he's put on SO much weight. He's becoming really chunky!! I'm worried as due to the current corona situation we have no access to a weigh in clinic and our health visitor is on leave.

He's still having 7oz every 3-4 hours through the day, I've tried my best to spread his bottles further apart as he's having 2 food meals per day at the minute.

He wants his bottle every 3 hours, I'm lucky if I can get him to wait the four hours. He has his bottles:

7am, 11am, 3pm 6pm and 8:30pm he typically sleeps through the night but sometimes will have a bottle at 2am but not all the time.

Am I feeding him too much? He has healthy home cooked food plenty of fruit and veg, I think I'm giving him too much milk? Honestly he looks like he's huge compared to three weeks ago. He is still fitting into his 3-6 month clothes for now though I'm just shocked by the chubby rolls (they're so cute!!!)

ANY advice is greatly appreciated, I'm new to all this please be kind xxx

My DTs at the same age were on 5x 8oz bottles a day plus food. At around 6 months they go through a growth spurt. My DS went through a massive growth spurt around this time and pretty much skipped 3-6 months entirely.

I don’t think it’s that easy or common for a baby to be over fed - they take what they need and will sick it up if they’ve had too much. I can totally relate to the anxiety about over feeding (had the same feelings with mine). I read on here that food before one is just for fun, so I wouldn’t think of reducing the milk yet as it’s his main source of food.

@MuchTooTired thanks for replying!! I feel much more reassured now, it's just shocking the change in him! He's so chunky now, I think I'm so worried because the weight gain has happened in such a short space of time

It sounds totally normal to me (and if it makes you feel any better, DS is 7 months, was born on the 9th percentile and is now growing out of 9 - 12 month clothes...). He has two meals a day and then four or five bottles alongside it. I think at this age, their calorie intake has gone up a lot but they're not necessarily expanding more so they end up looking chunky but once they start crawling/walking, their bodies totally change.

I was shocked with my ds too! It was suddenly when he started eating proper food (well purées and stuff!) he just got chunkier and chunkier! Ever since he’s been a size up on clothing for his age, but he’s perfectly healthy and just loves his food 🤷🏻‍♀️ DD on the other hand is smaller and more particular over what she eats, but she also looked pretty chunky at the same age as your ds but she’s thinned out since.

My ds was at one point off of the centile chart. Whilst I did get a slightly raised eyebrow from the hv, the advice was to basically maintain his weight until his age caught up with the scale. They’re now two, perfectly healthy and will eat their food if they want it, and will (really annoyingly, I’m working on it stopping!) launch it if they don’t.

Aww this sounds really great, it sounds like he is thriving after having earlier challenges. Well done 💐

Introducing foods is such a lot of fun, keep making sure it's varied and introducing new flavours. The minimum milk recommendation is 600ml/20oz per day so eventually as he takes more food you might start to reduce milk but I wouldn't worry for now.

Also in a couple of months he'll really start burning these calories with crawling and walking, and mental development is massive at 6 months onwards.