SUUUURE IT DOES!!
But most of the folks saying it have no idea that it is a stab into your mama- gut.

We all have our own inner demons to deal with, work thru, expel etc. It eventually gets easier to let it roll off your back.

My DS is TINY, TINY at 17m actual. The other day at the park DH had DS2 on his back in an ergo while we watched DS1 play with a little kid scootting all around the swingsets. Ofcourse the playground chat leads me to ask "How old is your little one?". ( I am actually really interested these days b/c my DS2 and his early, slow start have thrown me completely off when trying to judge babies and kids' ages KWIM?, everyone else looks HUGE to me

) "16ms," the mama replies.
'Far out", I think to myself watching her boy run around. "So how old is your little guy, " she asks me. I tell her that actually my DS2 is the same age as her son. The look this woman shot me was one of horror and dread, almost like she thought she might catch something from us! She then moves forward in her conversation and proceeds to tell me how her son is ahead on all his "milestones", and is small for his age! I realized she didn't get it at all, but I still wanted to smack her!

 

I actually told a few people their adjusted age rather then their actual age just to avoid the "they are so small, do you feed them, how much do they eat, do they go to the doctor" ARGH! Stop it!

 

Honestly it irritates me a lot more when people say "she looks so good" when clearly, she's tiny.

 

It used to bug me, but I think I have become desensitized to it. I know she's fine, so I don't care what anyone else thinks. I just got the small thing last weekend from the nursery aid at the church. I laughed and agreed, but didn't bother to tell her that she didn't know the half of it. DD was the oldest in the room. The lady that runs the nursery has purposely started leaving kids birthdays off the sign-in sheets, so no one can tell I'm putting her in the "wrong" room.

 

"small but mighty" is my reply. I don't get bothered. She is small, but not noticeably smaller than my others were at age 2.5. Plus I am so proud of her achievements since her status as a 2lb10oz-er at birth.

 

Yep, it bugs me, but I'm getting used to it, and as DS gets older, we hear it less often. To me, it always felt like a reminder of how I failed, and it hurt. He's still small, but most people don't know how big a typical 8 month old is so they don't notice his size as much (that, and his gigantic head seems to compensate for his small size!). When he was super tiny, my friends made him a shirt that said "I may be small, but I'm big where it counts" and another that said, "please don't tell me how small I am, or you may give me a Napoleon complex".

Honestly, what irks me most is when good-willed people say, "Oh so-and-so had a preemie 20 years ago and he weighed a pound and now he's 6 feet tall and 275 pounds". Sheesh. I hear that soooooo often. I know they just think they're comforting me, so their hearts are in the right place. No biggie.

 

It never bothered, me, but I did generally answer that she was early and she's big for being early... I still hear it all the time, but she's HUGE considering her early start and VSD. It does irk me when they want me to start her on solids since she's almost 5 months and is small. Like feeding her solids will help her gain faster (um, no) and she's still way too young for solids! With her early start we're planning to delay solids until she's 7 months or so anyway!

I think it's precious that she's tiny and am now constantly amazed by how big she is in comparison to where she started!

I do get annoyed when people tell me about the "so and so" was preemie and is fine stuff too. They do that with her VSD too. Like I'm silly for caring that my daughter has a hole in her heart. Yeah, it'll be fine and most kids do great. BUT, the potential that my DD may need HEART SURGERY is terrifying and it's insulting to minimize that for us. I realize they are trying to be helpful, but it's not. When it's your LO, it's not insignificant that she has a congenital heart defect.

 

Yes! I hate this! Actually it doesn't happen to us very often, but Owen's morning daycare teacher used to do this all the time. He was 11 lb at 4 months old and she would laugh and say that he was just so tiny, she was sure her daughter was his size when she came home from the hospital. Given he started out at 3 lb 8 oz, he seems huge to me, and it was really irritating to see that belittled every morning. I was not terribly upset when she quit suddenly and was replaced with someone much more sensitive to our feelings.

 

We used to get this a lot more than we do now. Pippa was born full term at 4 pounds 14 ounces. It used to annoy the crap out of me when people would say, "Oh, she's so tiny!" I just wanted to say, "Really?! You are kidding! I wonder what happened!"

I always took it with an implied but not spoken parenthetical addition: "She's so tiny! (What the hell did you do wrong?!)" OTOH, I put to sleep the silly idea that large women have large babies.

People would try to guess her age. "Oohhh! She must be...what? Two weeks old?" No, 3 months. "Ohhhhhhhh......" Now they guess that she is 4 months, but she is 9 months and somewhere around 14 pounds.

From now on, I'm going to say, "Yep, small but mighty!"

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by CorbinsMama I always took it with an implied but not spoken parenthetical addition: "She's so tiny! (What the hell did you do wrong?!)"

Exactly.

 

my DS was big for his gestational age (5 lbs at 33 weeks), so I got used to hearing what a big boy he was in the NICU from the nurses. His illness has made his weight gain an issue in recent months, although he's HUGE compared to his birth weight (17 lbs at almost 7 months). So I'm a little sensitive to the 'he's so tiny for his age!' comments. He's actually well into the term growth chart for weight, so it makes me wonder where all these giant babies are that make mine look tiny.

according to the developmental ped we saw just before we moved last week, he's delayed a little for his corrected age in motor skills, most likely because of the repeated infections. The tiny comments feel soooo judgmental to me, just like the, 'oh, my baby was crawling by that age' from parents of healthy full termers. Seriously, you'd think that all premature births were due to IV drug abuse or something.

 

"Oh, he's so tiny!"

This drove me crazy the first year of Izaac's life. He had come so far and to call him small negated all of his progress.
I know no one meant any harm by the statement but it always made us cringe.

 

Yeah, it annoys me too!

:

I was, and still am, a relatively small baby and woman. My children weighed a little over 4 lbs. when they were born (9 weeks early). I, however, was born full-term and healthy, and I weighed 5 lbs. 5 ozs. My kids weighed almost as much as I did! So they may have been small babies even if they had been born full-term. They are two now and people still comment on how small they are, and their pediatrician thinks they need to put on weight. And I thought we were worried about kids in this country being too overweight!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by CorbinsMama I always took it with an implied but not spoken parenthetical addition: "She's so tiny! (What the hell did you do wrong?!)"

EXACTLY! I always do too because it's the look they give me while they say it. Now I KNOW that some mamas on here who have the teeniest of babes are probably thinking

and "she had a 33 and 34weeker, she doesn't know the half of it." And they are right. I am blessed to have made it so far with both girls. But it makes me crazy when people do this to me. I was at the store today TRYING like the devil to nurse this child(who is still being difficult about nursing) and had everyone asking "oh she's sooooo tiny! how old is she?" When I replied that she'll be a month old in 4 days they immediately gave me "the look" like I did something wrong or compromised my pregnancy and health and jeopardized my child's health. I think it just goes along with my inner guilt at not having carried my girls to term. Both times my body evicted them before they were ready and yes, it does feel like my fault. I know it's not, there was nothing I could have done(pprom both times). But it still bothers me. And these people aren't exactly sensitive to that.