Alright, I need some advice from all the smarty pants out there. Be you parents, nurses, babysitters, or people who just know more about raising a baby than me, I would love any of your thoughts! So please put on your thinking caps now and share your infinite wisdom with me at the end. :) I promise I will appreciate anything you have to say!
Well, it finally happened. My daughter is no longer on the growth chart for her weight. She's always been in the 5% until now that she is 9 months old. She's 50-75% for height, and her head has consistently been in the 10%, but that weight issue is back once again. Since January, (which was when she had her last appointment with the pediatrician) she's only gained 5 ounces, even though she has more than doubled the amount of baby food she eats since then.
Now, I think can explain the slow weight gain by the fact that Avery never stops moving. She is crawling across the floor, constantly standing herself up, and is always finding new things to get into (no matter how much I baby proof, this baby keeps proving that this job is yet to be done.) I love that she is getting mobile and independent, and I'm glad she has a strong body to do it with.
But the question of the day is, "how do I fatten this baby up?" The pediatrician wants me to come back in for a weight check in a month to see what kind of magic I've worked. If she doesn't bulk up, we'll start doing some tests to see how her thyroid is functioning (which it was working just great at her newborn screen.)
I currently feed her every two hours. I nurse her four times a day (I'm planning on weaning her at the year mark) and then three times a day I do baby food/cheerios/sippy cup of water. So what's my new plan of actions? I'm thinking I'm going to feed her lots of avacodos (high calorie/fat), whole fat cheese, whole fat yogurt, maybe some carbs like bread and pasta. I've heard using olive oil when I scramble her eggs is a good way to add some calories too. Any other tips I should be aware of?
As you can tell, she's a happy baby! She eats well, sleeps well, rarely cries, and is simply fantastic! So I'm really not too worried, just hoping that we can put the pedal to the metal on this weight gain! Again, any ideas you have to share with me would be awesome!
I'm sorry, I'm going to be absolutely no help to you except to say that I love how your post is asking for help for this adorable baby and all the pictures make me chuckle at her cuteness when I'm supposed to be wracking my brain for advice. Not that I had any to give, it was just hard to feel your panic while looking at the big pretty peeking eyes.
ReplyDeleteOur now almost 3 year old was really low on weight also - regularly around 2%. We started giving her sippies of Carnation Instant Breakfast (the chocolate powder) mixed with whole milk. She would carry around the sippy drinking it all day and we would just refill it whenever it was empty. She would drain 3-5 Carnation/whole milk sippies every single day. The Carnation powder doesn't have a ton of fat, but the whole milk does and together a single sippy is almost 300 calories. She didn't exactly pack on the pounds, but her weight did steadily go up. Even though she was still skinny her pediatrician said he was no longer worried as long as her weight kept going up.
ReplyDeleteWe also did yogurt for a while - whichever kind had the most fat per serving. At meals we would give her whatever we were eating and then let her have her sippy when she was done eating.
Linds-
ReplyDeleteyour ideas are exactly what we have done with Archie who has been around the 5th percentile since he was 5 or 6 months. He loves whole milk yogurt and scrambled cheesy eggs. Something to note is that fruit has more calories then vegetables (of course she still needs veggies). Baby food meat smells horrible but if she can't handle what you are eating mushed up, you could try them -I would mix a little meat in with squash or applesauce or something. It's probably not an issue since you feed her so often, but you could try giving her formula or expressed breast milk after she nurses to see if she got all the way full from nursing.
Good luck, she sure is darling! If both our babes stay tall and thin they'll make a cute couple in 20+ years!