Saturday, April 23, 2011

Little Mamas Make Little Babies

At my little Button's six-month checkup, I was told he hadn't gained enough weight. It wasn't that he wasn't big enough in general. He was about average for a six-month old breastfed boy. It was that he had only gained a pound between his four month and six month visits. This dropped his growth from the 25 percentile to the 5 percentile. Now, I don't put a lot of stock in percentiles. But I recognize that the drop was a bit drastic. There was talk about supplementing with formula and free samples, etc.

Now, I'm not against formula necessarily. I'm against formula for my little guy. The doctor said that I could also start giving him more solids. I had been planning on introducing solids anyway, so I politely turned down the formula and said I would start him on "real food."

But here's the thing that annoys me about this. I'm 5 feet tall. Five feet even. No extra inches there. My husband is 5'6". We are little people. If we were at our ideal weights, we'd be even littler. Do they expect me to have a giant baby?

My baby is healthy and happy. He's a ball of energy. He hasn't met every six-month milestone, but he's working on them and he's not even remotely behind on anything. He's perfect (maybe I'm a bit biased, but whatever).

Bottom line...little mamas (and papas) make little babies!

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, Sylvie dropped to 10th percentile and has been holding steady there for the last 6 months. I'm not small, but she has small people on all sides of the family. I trust breastfeeding and I'm not worried. Someone has got to bring up the rear on the bell curve!

    Keep up the good work! Hearts, Kate

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  2. Kate, Jessie told me about that. i said we'll have to get together and have a small baby party! since he seems to like food so much, i'll keep trying new things, but i'm not too worried.

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