Bear with me a bit here. My youngest 7mos old and a surprise pregnancy that I'm still coming to terms with (you'd think I would have moved past it by now). She's fairly high needs and entirely preferential - as in if it involves her the task falls to me. She barely tolerates anyone else.
I know it's not fair to compare her to my other children and silly to expect that they will all grow at the same rate. On the other hand she's very much the odd one out. All three of my children were around the same weight (9lbs, 8lbs 12oz, and 8lbs 14oz) and length when born. The older two seemed to grow at about the same rate. They start out on the 75% and trend towards the upper percentiles (tall for their age though not overweight by any means).
My youngest is exactly the opposite. She started out at the 75% for weight and went down from there...to around the 25%. Length wise she went up a percentile or so. Long and skinny as it were.
She's highly distractible. It needs to be dark and quiet with just the two of us to nurse. It's a crap shoot if we're out of the house - sometimes she'll nurse, sometimes she won't. If she doesn't nurse much during the day she'll tank up at night and go through multiple diapers in the process. It would seem that on wet diapers she's right on track. As for BMs - it's once a week or so only, but she'll literally leak right out of the diaper at least once when she goes.
She hits all of her developmental milestones - either right on track to slightly ahead. She's also rather active - right now she's on the cusp of sitting up unassisted and moving from the army crawl to hands & knees. She's not the least bit interested in solids - unless it's something I'm eating and then she mostly sucks on it so it's more of an experience of taste than anything. No pacifiers and I've only rarely seen her suck on her fingers.
So the question is....in an older baby, how can you tell if they're getting enough? Should I be concerned when she's particularly fussy that she's not getting enough? Given that she's not really interested in solids...and most of them are lower calorie than bm...the key is to keep nursing, correct? Any other options to increasing her calories or fat intake? It's not like I can force her to nurse, but then I get a little concerned when we go through a night like last night and she needs to be latched on at all times.
TIA for helping me talk this through.
I know it's not fair to compare her to my other children and silly to expect that they will all grow at the same rate. On the other hand she's very much the odd one out. All three of my children were around the same weight (9lbs, 8lbs 12oz, and 8lbs 14oz) and length when born. The older two seemed to grow at about the same rate. They start out on the 75% and trend towards the upper percentiles (tall for their age though not overweight by any means).
My youngest is exactly the opposite. She started out at the 75% for weight and went down from there...to around the 25%. Length wise she went up a percentile or so. Long and skinny as it were.
She's highly distractible. It needs to be dark and quiet with just the two of us to nurse. It's a crap shoot if we're out of the house - sometimes she'll nurse, sometimes she won't. If she doesn't nurse much during the day she'll tank up at night and go through multiple diapers in the process. It would seem that on wet diapers she's right on track. As for BMs - it's once a week or so only, but she'll literally leak right out of the diaper at least once when she goes.
She hits all of her developmental milestones - either right on track to slightly ahead. She's also rather active - right now she's on the cusp of sitting up unassisted and moving from the army crawl to hands & knees. She's not the least bit interested in solids - unless it's something I'm eating and then she mostly sucks on it so it's more of an experience of taste than anything. No pacifiers and I've only rarely seen her suck on her fingers.
So the question is....in an older baby, how can you tell if they're getting enough? Should I be concerned when she's particularly fussy that she's not getting enough? Given that she's not really interested in solids...and most of them are lower calorie than bm...the key is to keep nursing, correct? Any other options to increasing her calories or fat intake? It's not like I can force her to nurse, but then I get a little concerned when we go through a night like last night and she needs to be latched on at all times.
TIA for helping me talk this through.
