My little peanut certainly earned her nickname. She was born 7lbs 8oz and wore her newborn sized clothing with pride until she was at least 6 weeks old. She’s always been on the lower end of the growth chart. We went for weekly weight checks for the first few weeks of her life, mostly due to my low milk supply. Her slow growth and my lack of milk were the two reasons that made us switch to formula feeding.
On the other hand, she’s always been incredibly active. I’ve never known Baby Jumper to sit still. She kicked me and kicked me and kicked me when she was still in my belly, and was rolling over at two weeks of age. When I say she doesn’t sit still, I mean she literally doesn’t sit still. She’ll even kick her legs or wiggle her toes when she’s having a bottle. She eats a healthy diet, and there are times when we feel the need to take food away from her in fear of her overeating. Baby Jumper also achieved all of her milestones at a very early age. She was crawling at three months and walking at 7 months. Now at 11 months old, she can run around our backyard! According to the doctor, Baby Jumper started dipping on the growth chart around 6 months of age. So does it have something to do with her activity level?
Baby Jumper started solids at 4 months of age, when we gave her rice cereal. We waited a few weeks before we tried purees. She loved them, until my mom gave her a bit of roast and gravy (that she’d pureed in a blender) and that was the end of pureed baby food from a jar. Since about 6 months of age, she’s been eating what we eat. There isn’t anything you can’t put in a blender! Around 8 or 9 months, we started letting her have more whole foods. Now she’ll pick up her own ravioli bites or chicken pieces and feed herself, opposed to us spoon feeding her. She does a great job of it, and we’re so proud of her! It’s hard for me to imagine that having such a good eater is resulting in a weight concern.
So, what’s the problem then? Well, Baby Jumper is in the 9th% for her weight… which is a huge drop from the 25th% she was in back at her 6 month appointment. Being in such a low percentile in and of itself isn’t a concern. Doctors and pediatricians use growth charts to track the growth of infants, children and adolescents. Growth charts alone are not meant to be a diagnostic tool. Instead, they illustrate the child’s growth over a period of time. The red flag, for us, is that she is no longer on target with her weight. We go in for weight checks monthly, and had another one just this morning. At her 9 month appointment, Baby Jumper weighed 16lbs 8oz. This morning, at 10.5 months, she weighed 17lbs 2oz. The doctor is pleased with the weight gain, but would have liked to have seen more.
I feel awful. It’s my responsibility (and Papa Jumper’s) to make sure our baby gets the best nutrition possible. I feel like I ought to be feeding her more, but I’m not exaggerating when I say there are times we need to take food away from her. She’ll eat, and eat, and EAT until she makes herself sick. The doctor is slightly concerned that there could be a problem with her absorbing nutrients, and we will be discussing the possibility of visiting with a nutritionist at Baby Jumper’s one year visit in October.
In the meantime, we’re sprucing up her regular diet with some fattier foods. We’ll mix some sour cream into her mashed potatoes, for instance, or let her have a snack of string cheese instead of strawberries.
Do you have a slim baby and have you ever dealt with weight gain concerns for your child? Did you meet with a nutritionist?
blogger / watermelon / 14218 posts
Wagon Jr. is not very slim, but he has only gained a pound in the past year (from 1.5 to 2.5 years old). So the pediatrician is always asking us to get him to gain weight and come back for another weight check, just to make sure he CAN gain weight. We try to sneak butter and cheese into everything he eats, but it’s tough to fatten up a toddler who is super picky and headstrong about food, and doesn’t like cake or cookies! Or juice!
guest
Yes and yes. My Goo is 4.5 yrs old and weighs 34 lbs – she still isn’t even big enough for a booster. She was a terrible eater as a young toddler, and at one point became anemic. We tried everything, stuck to our guns for years, and she is now a pretty good eater, but she is still my skinny-Minnie. Healthy as can be, and strong as an ox – she just has a metabolism that runs at the speed of light. I beat myself up for years until I realized that she was growing, the pediatrician said she was fine (once we dealt with the anemia) and she’s just stubborn. Really, really stubborn. My heart goes out to because it’s so hard, but remember – being small isn’t bad. Having a fast metabolism is a wonderful thing (I’m jealous), and it sounds like you’re doing everything right. Hang in there. This, too, shall pass. Unless you just have a skinny-Minnie like I do.
blogger / nectarine / 2010 posts
Maddox is a peanut too, he drops a few percentiles at each visit and is currently around the 15th at 9m even though he eats a lot. He’s super active too. I didn’t know it, but according to the other moms whose jaws hit the floor during baby yoga, he is. (It’s my little secret that he sleeps hard too though!) I don’t worry about it much since he eats like a champ and started eating table food at 6m. There isn’t anything he won’t eat, so I just concentrate of giving him nutritious foods v. rice and white “flour” foods like pancakes and waffles that are filling with less nutritional value (he eats GF so whatever the white flour substitutes are.)
Avocados offer super healthy fats as does olive oil. Rather than sour cream, which can be high in saturated fat, maybe try tossing her veggies in olive oil before sauteing them (or drizzling them before serving), and offering her slices of avocado with her meals. Also, whole milk yogurt is great too. I have a friend with tiny twins who were born several months early. Her ped wanted her to supplement with formula around 6m but she wanted to EBF and started giving them an avocado a day. Within a month they were back on the growth charts and doing great!
cantaloupe / 6730 posts
A friend of mine had a tiny tiny baby (far thinner than Baby Jumper). And to this day she is rail thin. Turned out to be celiac or something similar. She seems to be doing fine, but I think she’ll be skinny all her life.
honeydew / 7488 posts
I took my baby for his 12 month well visit today. He too has dropped from 25% in weight to 10%. The pediatrician said she wasn’t worried, as this is a time when babies tend to drop off the growth curve a little. My LO is walking and very active. He eats very well and loves meat and fruit. He does’nt like to nurse any more and I am transitioning him to whole millk, and he doesn’t seem to like the taste. The dr. said if I am super worried, I can mix some carnatian instant breakfast with whole milk. I am not sure I am to the point where I will try that, but I probably will try to get more calories into his food. You’re not alone! My 4 yr old also fell off the curve for a while, but by the next visit she was back on track.
coffee bean / 29 posts
As a first time mom I freaked out & panic about the growth curve & weight gain. I did supplement (and now regret it), and had medical work ups, scopes, blood tests, xrays – that were all inconclusive.
Now that I am on my 3rd child I don’t panic and actually went against my doctors advice to supplement (he was having plenty of wet & bm diapers so I knew everything was ok). My babies were 6lbs 10 oz, 6lbs 5oz and 6lbs 2oz respectively. My kids eat and are active, but my daughter who is 8 is only in the 5th percentile right now. My older son (10yrs) was in the 50th for weight & 25th for height, then he grew an inch over the summer so I am sure those have changed.
My advice would be to focus on nutrition and whole foods and to not stress. Little girls have too much pressure about weight/size/appearance from society. We as parents don’t need to make it worse IMO
pomegranate / 3053 posts
My 3-year-old was never low on the weight scale but his weight has been slow. He didn’t gain any weight between 2 and 3 and when I had my second and my family came to help he gained 2 lbs in the 6 weeks they were here for and haven’t gained any more since then. That was 5.5 months ago. He could probably eat more but sometimes he eats at 9:30am for breakfast and so the only snack he gets in during the day time is after his nap. He can be particular with food; but, generally, is a good eater. It just takes him a REALLY long time to eat. We’re still working on the time issue. Hope your cute little girl just has a high metabolism and nothing else!
guest
I agree that healthy fats would be the best supplement, like avocados and olive oil. Almond butter, cashew butter and whole milk yogurt are all good ideas too.
cherry / 202 posts
My daughter is a skinny minnie, she’s 4 and is only 30 lbs. She’s getting taller but not really gaining weight and she can eat. When she’s done with a meal she has a nice round little pot belly and all, 2 hours later its flat as can be. I don’t stress over it because developmentally she’s fine, met her milestones and I know I am feeding her a well balanced diet.
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
My niece is the same way. She’s just tiny. She weight 16 lbs at 9 month old and only gains a pound or two in a month generally. She’a just over a year now. Like Baby Jumper, she is developmentally on target or ahead. I think she is just built tiny like her grandma!
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21616 posts
@Mrs. Stroller: I was going to suggest avocados too! I needed to make sure Cobi loved them. He does now (didn’t at first!)! They are full of wonderful healthy fats.
Cobi was even smaller at birth and in NB clothes until 12 weeks. He is 6.5 months old and there are a few brands he still fits into their 0-3 mos, he is mostly in 3-6mos and 6-9 is HUGE on him.
He has always been an eating champ – but pretty consistent percentile wise – averaging 15-20%. So I’m not worried.
Hope she starts gaining some weight soon!
grapefruit / 4110 posts
My little peanut has been an experience. He was 8 lbs 9 oz when he was born this is the 50th percentile. At 3 months he had gained weight but dropped to the 25th percentile. I then went on a total elimination diet because of suspected intolerance’s. At 6 months, he had dropped to the 2 percentile and we started getting concerned. He ate every few hours and was exclusively breastfed and I produced enough. The doctor wasn’t too concerned. At 8 months he had dropped to the 0.5 (zero point five) percentile. We started Baby Led Weaning at 5 1/2 months. We went to a gastro for his issues. We were given neocate formula and he took to that like he was starving for 2 weeks. After which he refused it. We added olive oil to purees and let him BLW and take purees. He stopped accepting purees after 4 weeks. But he started gaining weight. He has gained 1 pound every month from 11 – 16.
He officially doubled his birthweight on his first birthday and was in the 1 percentile. We believe he may finally be 20 pounds at 16 months old.
I believe that he wasn’t absorbing nutrients. I think this was due to the damage to his system from his tolerances and the medication he was on for reflux.
Our gastro would love to see our son gaining more weight. We are very happy with his weight gain and how he is doing. He looks healthy now and that is the most important part. He eats absolutely everything and has a great appetite.
We can’t have dairy so we use olive and coconut oil to fatten things up and just keep feeding him. He is allowed to always have food. We love the freeze dried fruits and vegetables in a cup. We have started almond butter. He won’t eat avocado anymore. It takes a long time for him to eat a new food. We just added eggs to his diet at 14 months old and just now he is willing to actually eat them.
coffee bean / 28 posts
Weight concerns is definitely something I have experience with. L was 6lbs 11 oz. at birth. We had a hell of a time breastfeeding and in the first few months I had to pump to supplement with the occasional addition of formula. She’s always been on the low end of the charts, usually hovering around 5%, but often lower. We’ve had bloodwork and test done, but other than hypercalcemia (unrelated to weight), she’s healthy. Just small. She was about 16 lbs at her one year appointment and now at a little over two years, she’s 23 lbs.
I just make sure to give her plenty of healthy fats and still give whole milk. She loves freeze dried fruit and almost anything cold. I freeze the fruit puree pouches in popsicle molds and she loves that. And yogurt frozen in the molds works well too.
pea / 6 posts
Our son was born small but was bulking up fast on breast milk during the first few months–he went up to as high as 35th percentile. At around five months I began to notice that he wasn’t gaining weight as quickly and hoped that it was because we were traveling quite a bit, including an international relocation. We began meeting with a nutritionist when he was about 8 months old when our GP charted a drop from 9 to 2 percentile, suspecting a combination of dairy allergy and starting solids (BLW). Our first nutritionist wanted him to have 800 ml of formula a day as a goal (he was beginning to wean), which was laughable to me because I could barely get him to take 350 ml.
For a whole month I obsessed with numbers: How much he ate, how much he drank, and how much weight he gained (with weekly weigh-ins). I was getting stressed out about not having been a good mom, and how daunting the weight-gaining task is when your child can’t have fattening foods like cheese and cream.
The thing is, he is a happy and healthy boy who is developing well. And the incessant worrying was beginning to affect our home life. My baby was spending more time in his high chair than playing on the floor. I also didn’t want him to develop a complex about food. Now I try to relax about how much he eats, reminding myself that the days when he doesn’t feel like eating/drinking as much will be made up on the days that he seems insatiable. It is working out much better for all of us and he has stabilized at 9 percentile.
GOLD / wonderful grape / 20289 posts
This is one things I’m so thankful I don’t have to worry about. My LO is steadily in the 95th percentile in weight, and a very big girl! I do have a friend who’s LO had failure to thrive, even though she did everything she could to fatten her up and she ended up needing feeding therapy. Luckily it worked and she’s growing and healthy now
coffee bean / 29 posts
Our son had a similar experience. He was always <10th percentile, but it was because he was always running/active. We had nurses tell us to put butter in his food. My husband and I opted not to adhere to the recommendation because that's not how we eat. At a certain point he got really picky and after stressing about it and making meal times miserable, we just focused on one good meal a day. Now at two, he's eating a bit better, but still ~ 10th percentile. My suggestion is don't get hung up on the percentile and just focus on overall health.