Advice on Eating for a Slow Weight Gain of 6 Month Old

M...

I totally understand what you are going through. I have a 2 year old that has the same problem. When he was born he was 6lbs 8 oz. At 6 months he was only about 10lbs so i totally understand. They told us that if we could get him to gain an oz wever couple of weeks that was good for us. He couldnt gain that much. He was only gaining about 1/2 oz every month so they were worried. We have been through so many tests and everything and we are still going through more. I am here if you want to talk to someone.

My daughter was 6 pounds at birth - wasn't interested in eating much then (went down to 5 pounds 10 ounces) and still isn't much of an eater...she is 3 and weighs about 26 pounds...she is just petite. The pediatrician checks to make sure she stays with her growth pattern. They get concerned when a baby was in the 50% and drops to the 25%. My son is the opposite - 15 months and 28 pounds and eats like a champ. We are all different sizes...you are petite and she may be too. Don't let your husband's father's issue with weight change how you feed your daughter though! She will get get her good eating habits from you and her dad!

I WOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT IT TOO MUCH AT ALL, UNLESS HER DOCTOR SEE'S SOMETHING WRONG. MY DAUGHTER WAS BORN AT 7lbs 5oz AND DROPPED TO 6LBS AS WELL. SHE WASN'T A BIG EATER UNTIL ABOUT 8 MONTHS OLD. SHE WAS ALWAYS PETITE AND NEVER GAINED MUCH BETWEEN HER CHECK-UPS. I FIRST THOUGHT SOMETHING WAS WRONG BECAUSE IN BOTH OF OUR FAMILIES ALL THE BABIES ARE BIG, BUT SHE WAS SMALL. SHE'LL BE 1 IN SEPT AND IS JUST STARTING TO FIT HER 12MONTH CLOTHES, BUT SHE EATS A 1 1/2C OF CEREAL IN THE MORNING, 2- 4oz JARS OF BABY FOOD IN THE AFTERNOON, AND A FRUIT CUP FOR A SNACK. FOR DINNER I JUST FEED HER A LITTLE OF WHAT WE'RE HAVING AND SHE HAS ABOUT 4- 6oz BOTTLES IN THE COURSE OF THE DAY AS WELL. BUT LIKE I SAID, SHE DIDN'T START EATING LIKE THIS TILL ABOUT 8 MONTHS. YOU'RE DAUGHTER WILL START EATING MORE WHEN SHE'S READY. MY SUGGESTION IS TO OFFER IT TO HER AND LET HER DECIDE IF SHE WANTS TO EAT IT OR NOT. IF YOU'RE REALLY CONSERNED ABOUT VITIAMINS, YOU COULD ALWAY ADD LIQUID DROPS TO HER FOOD AND BOTTLES. HOPE THIS EASES YOUR MIND AND GOOD LUCK!

Hi M.,

I'm your extreme and I don't want to alarm you as I'm probably the exception to the normal where kids just grow at their pace. My doctor always said: "babies can't read books so they don't know what averages they should aim for."

My daughter was similiar to yours, normal birthweight, dropped weight first week, slow, slow gain, not big eater, i was worried about her from Day 3 of her life and her eating. (She's my 3rd child so I had some comparisons.) At 6 months she had a few incidents where she did larges spits/vomits. Seemed like just a tummy bug to me but as I still worried about her so took her to pediatrician. He listened and this time decided there was more to what met the eye: and suggested she may have reflux - mostly 'silent reflux' (i.e. where she swallows it again so doesn't do much external vomitting). We saw the specialist and yes, she did have reflux. We started giving her medicine for reflux but she'd just vomit it up mostly - she has a hair trigger gag relex. She still did poorly because babies are smart enough to figure out whenever I eat I get this uncomfortable reflux sensation - so she didn't want to eat much. And she ate primarily formula (as it has more calories then any other food) and some youghurt.) We took the 'wait and see if she'll grow out if' approach. Finally, at one year she got another tummy bug, lost weight and pediatrican and us decided she wasn't going to out grow - or even survive this - this without more invasive help: So in to hospital we went. She had tests run to ensure the right diagnoses and when it all came back negative, with just severe reflux, she got a gastrointenstinal-tube (g-tube) put in her stomach so we could feed her thru that - and really control the food intake - and finally give her medicine that way too. (It was great. You can drip fed her while she's sleeping. I never realized how stressed I was about her eating until I could truly control it.)

To keep the story short: She is 25 months now. She's always been the happiest, smiliest baby - even with all her trails and hospital visits. She still has reflux and reflux-vomits unpredictable about once a week but she is 15 percentile now, trying hard to keep up with her 2 older brothers (but is about 6 months behind developmentally probably because she was nutrinally lacking in her early months), is learning how to eat 'normally' i.e. orally and we hope to begin to wean her off the g-tube this fall.

I'd expect your daughter turns out be quite normal and not as extreme as mine. But for ease of mind I do suggest you check with your pediatrician if reflux could be a consideration.

Dear Malaina,
Your daughter's story sounds so much like my daughter's! She is my second, and her big brother was a big eater, and a very big boy (27lb by 9 mos!). He is now an average size 7 year old. My daughter was born at 8 lbs and gained slowly but surely until 9 mos, when she dropped off the chart. By one year she only weighed 15 lbs. She was a happy, content baby and a good nurser. She enjoyed a good variety of solid foods, but just not a large quantity. Sometimes, though, she would act like she was voraciously hungry and if I allowed her to keep eating, she would vomit EVERYTHING. Then, she truly would be hungry and I would have nothing left to give her!
To make a long story short, we had a long year of weight checks and visits with various specialists. She was tested for everything having to do with her g.i.tract, food absorbtion, allergies, the list goes on.
Finally, when she was two, she was able to verbalize that it hurt when she went potty, and voila! she had been having asymptomatic bladder infections that had kept her body from growing properly--and she had probably spent much of her life just not really feeling like eating. It turned out that she had urinary reflux (a condition in which urine backs up from the bladder back to the kidney.) We gave her antibiotics every day for over a year to prevent infection. By the time she was three, she had outgrown the condition and is now fine. She is still little, and I think that her body is just programmed to be petite. I wish now that I would have insisted that her urine be checked so much earlier...
Something to keep in mind and possibly check out. The test they do to confirm urinary reflux is called a VCUG.
I wish you luck!
E.

My daughter was a slow eater too. She droped off the charts and we had all kinds of tests done but nothing ever showed up. She is now 2 3/4 and is back on the charts and doing fine. She looks and feels small but she is actually the same size as her twin sister who looks and feel bigger. They are now 28 lbs. She is still a light eater but she is obvisly eating enough for her. I do give her "Boost" to help but the Dr said it is not nessassary because she is doing so well. It was hard for us to see at first but it all worked out OK. I did not think she would ever catch up to her twin but she has and has stayed there for about 8 mo now. I hope thing will work out for you too.

I don't think I would worry if I were you. I belong to a message board and our babies are coming up on one year and some of them only weigh 16-18 lbs. I would say as long as shes happy and content not to worry. Is she crawling?? Sometimes babies burn calories fast once they have become mobile so there is less weight gain. It sounds like you are doing just fine. Your baby is just a petite little one.

I generally feed my babies until they won't eat anymore. If you have a problem with spitting up just be sure to burp them or leave about 1/2 hour in between food and bottle. I have a 7 month old foster child right now and he eats about 4 T. of cereal that is made using formula and then he'll drink the rest of the bottle when he's done eating the cereal. Then at 11 am or so he'll eat about 3 T. of veggies and 3 T. of fruits, followed by a 6 oz bottle. At 4 pm he'll repeat what he had for lunch and then at 8 pm he'll eat the same as breatfast.
So, he ends up eating 4, 6 oz bottles per day and 2 of them are also used for his cereal mixing.
He weighed 21.6 lbs at his 6 month check up and my own girls were even larger at that age. I know that he had trouble gaining weight when he was with his mother because of untreated reflux. He would twist his head to the side when eating his bottles because it was burning and then had a cough that sounded like a chain smoker.
If you let her eat until she is done she should hopefully start eating more and more as she stretches out her tummy.
Best of luck,
J.
Mom of 2 but sometimes as many as 8