And He Needs to Gain More Weight

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Just when I thought things were going great we had Jaron's 9 month check-up. He's perfect, which I knew, except that his weight percentile has dropped. Again.

I make my babies Travel Sized

He was born at 8lbs 5oz, I'm sure that was a little inflated due to IV fluids (don't get me started), but not too much. That was around the 68%ile, at 4 weeks he was at the 48%ile, not too bad, 2 months 32%ile still dropping but no one was worried. This was when I started wondering and putting the pieces together about 2 weeks before  his 4 month appt I figured out that I had a Hindmilk/Foremilk Imbalance (story here).

At his 4 month appt he'd dropped from the 30's to the 13%ile. That's when our Dr said something, but when I told him what our issues had been and that I had taken steps to balance things out he was confident that his weight would stabilize by 6 months.

Six months rolled by and it did stabilize somewhat, at the 10%ile, the smallest drop we'd seen. I stopped worrying as much. I fed him as much as he wanted, which wasn't much, but he's getting older, so I chalked it up to that. He's more active, more distracted, more efficient. He would go through phases of loving solids and then refusing all of them, even his favorites and only nursing. It made for some interesting diapers, but I wasn't worried.

Then we had his 9 month appointment yesterday. He's 16lbs 8.5oz. At 9 months, he's not even quite doubled his birth weight. He's <3%ile by one chart and in the 3 - 5%ile on the other. If he were little all over it might be more explainable, but he's 28" long (40%ile).

Fortunately we have a good doctor, his recommendation through all of this has been "Breastfeed more!" So at the end of World Breastfeeding Week I'm trying to get my active 9 month old to nurse more instead of staying the same or starting to wean. Well, at least it gives me an "excuse" for all the critics who think he should be mostly on solids at this point. Doctor's orders!

I got some great advice at #BFCafe Twitter chat last night, so glad his appt was on a Thursday! We'll be working on cutting out distractions, which means occupying Aedyn with a movie in another room. I'm going to try and get him to nurse on both sides every time, maybe the change in position will help him eat more. (A little worried that this might lead back to oversupply and imbalance, but it's a risk I feel I have to take.) I'm also going to offer more frequently during the day and I'm going to stop trying to put him back to sleep at night without nursing. I'm thinking now that it wasn't really a habit, but that he really was needing those feedings. (I wasn't trying terribly hard anyway.)

I'm not quite ready to wake him to feed him at night, but I will if he hasn't stabilized by 12 months. Why do I feel like his nursing style has been the exact opposite of most babies? Sleeping 6 hour night stretches as a newborn and talking about waking him to nurse at 12 months....


But, as if he heard the doctor, he nursed really well all day yesterday after his appointment and was eating anything he could get his hands on...including breaking his way into a bag of Cheetos...

Maybe he just has a height spurt before he packs on a ton of weight and we caught him between the two.

So it's time to nurse again and no distractions means no NAK (nursing at keyboard) for me. Say a prayer and wish me luck!

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