Slow weight gain for 9mo old

[LeahMeryl]

I love nursing my son.  I'll start there. 

While he was born at 8.9 pounds, he very quickly dropped to the 30% for weight and has stayed in that range ever since.  I worried about that but didn't panic because his height stayed in the 70+% range.  Today at his 9mo check up, his height is down to the 50% (28.5 inches).  So now I'm concerned.

He was breastfed exclusively until 6 months and at that point we started introducing small amounts of baby food.  He still isn't crazy about eating food -- doesn't want anything off of a spoon -- although he's very willing to each little bits of avocado or melon or fruit puffs.

DS is VERY active.  Started crawling at 6mo and is literally all over the place, crawling, climbing...  He's hit or exceeded all developmental milestones.

Am I worrying for nothing? 

[gemasita]

I think I am correct in this...the percentiles don't mean that much.  What is more important is:  Is your son gaining weight and gaining the number of oz/day that your doctor decides is right for him.  Babies are going to change percentiles all the time.  It would be rare for them to stay in the exact same percentile for weight and height from month to month.  So I would ask your doctor how much your son should be gaining at this age and then figure out if this is within normal.

My DS lost a lot of weight when he is born so I understand your concern.  People should never just blow off a mom who is concerned but I think the actual weight is going to tell you a lot more about his health than the percentiles.

[PatioGardener]

Which growth charts are you using? Try to plot your baby's weights on the WHO chart (see here for a nice chart in pounds and kilograms). Is he still falling off his curve?

[foreverinbluejeans]

You are concerned because your baby's height dropped from the 70th percentile to the 50th percentile? When evaluating what to be concerned about there are questions you should ask yourself. What is there to worry about? Are there developmental or disease conditions to worry about? Your baby is still at the 50th percentile, perfectly normal. Different people or the same person on different days may measure your baby and get different measurements. With infants 0.5 - 1 inch can make a big percentile difference. Often the hcp is measuring a baby that is moving around. There is no reason to believe your child has a developmental disorder or genetic condition. 

  Is there anything that can be done for your child? You don't want your child to gain more weight. It's better for babies and infants to be on the smaller part of the US growth charts. The US charts include formula fed babies. Formula fed babies are heavier and we now know obesity can begin in infancy. There is nothing anyone can do to make your child longer.

Since there is no reason to think there is anything wrong with your baby and nothing that can be done to make him grow then there is nothing to worry about. You will be very lucky if this is the only thing you question if you should be worried about with your children. If your son is the typical boy there you are going to have ER visits, stitches, broken bones, ect. There may be serious accidents and hospitalizations. They don't tell you in the baby books to get ready for all the tough things you will go though as a mother.

[PatioGardener]

Originally Posted by foreverinbluejeans 

Since there is no reason to think there is anything wrong with your baby and nothing that can be done to make him grow then there is nothing to worry about.

I find this information concerning - we do not know if there is anything wrong, and do not know if there is anything that would make baby grow more. To assure a poster that nothing is wrong and not to worry when baby is not growing as would be typically expected can be dangerous in some situations. We do not know which growth chart is being used. Dropping percentiles can be a red flag, that's why we have growth standards.

OP, I'm not saying that anything is wrong, but if you are worried, then I encourage you to follow your intuition.

Sometimes a baby isn't growing at a typical rate simply because he or she isn't taking in enough breastmilk. This can be for reasons like a tongue-tie that has been missed, or baby is on a restricted breastfeeding schedule.. When the issue is resolved, the growth rate returns to a more typical pattern.

OP, please feel free to post some more info about your situation. For now, I can offer that it is really hard to get a good height measurement on a 9 month old, so maybe your doctor measured incorrectly. I'd try to measure again and see if that fixed the issue. I'd also use the WHO growth charts (as I mentioned above).