Please help - 10 month old keeps losing weight

[ready2pop]

My 10 month old DS keeps losing weight. It comes in fits and starts so he'll slowly gain weight for a few weeks but then suddenly lose it all again. I'm at the end of my tether and just don't know what to do.

He was only 5lbs 12oz when he was born but then put on weight well and was closely following the 25th centile graph until recently.

Then, over the course of November he lost about 4ozs which caused our health visitors to have a huge panic. We weren't too worried as he still seemed healthy and over the next 3 weeks he put on a lb or so. Since then, he's carried on gaining weight, although more slowly - perhaps an oz a week. I've just weighed him again though and he has lost a full lb in 10 days.

This means that in effect, he has not gained any weight in almost 3 months.

He has been slightly off his food for the last week, perhaps eating about 2/3 of the normal amount, but I wouldn't have thought it would have affected his weight this much. He still seems to be taking in milk at the same rate (Bf though so hard to tell). He has had a few runny nappies over the last week but again nothing drastic. The only other change is that his sleep has been very disturbed which we had put down to teething.

I just don't know what to do. He is tricky to feed at the best of times and I really can't get any more food in to him. I'm just so worried that he weighs no more now than he did when he was 7 months. I also feel awful that I am obviously failing to feed him adequately.

On top of it all, I'm pregnant again after a recent miscarriage and am terrified that the stress of DS's weight loss will cause another mc.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading.

Hello R2P,

Really sorry to hear that you are so worried, but I can understand why you are - tehre is something fundamental about needing to know that you are feeding your child properly.

I had a similar thing with my ds, who stubbornly refused to gain very much weight at all from about 4 months til he was 18 months or so, and lurked off the bottom of the chart for much of that time. I remember feeling that I was a total failure as a mother - I even used to get my dp or my mother to try and feed him while I wasn't there because I was so scared that I was somehow stoppping him from eating - or at least that the hv, dietician and paediatrician thought that it was my fault). It was dreadful. At points I really thought that he would be taken into care and fed through a tube to make up for his terrible mother. I was bfing too, and felt that the professionals thought I was starving him - but really didn't want to introduce formula top-ups, which were repeatedly recommended as my milk was insufficient.

My ds was eventually discharged with the diagnosis of "wee but healthy", so all the angst was in vain.

I don't know enough about toddler weight gain to know whether the pattern you describe is cause for (medical) concern or not, I'm afraid, though.

Are you getting plenty of support in rl? I hope so.

Sorry should say 'my milk was "insufficient"' as the hps seemed to think it was. It wasn't, of course.

what are the docs offering to do to investigate?