My son's weight - health visitor doing my head in

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I'll try to remember what my Granny said, "a mother's place is in the wrong".

the rest of the quote should go 'and it's the Health Visitor's place to put you there when the mother in law isn't there to do it'.






I have a skinny one, too - 50th centile height throughout (except for at birth - 90th then), but below the 5th for weight. She has long, skinny birdlike limbs. The odds on getting her to wear dungarees? Less than zero. Has been since she was about 2.

I suggest you either get the number of a tailor who can do decent alterations on trousers or reconcile yourself to years of him looking as though his trousers have argued with his feet. Mine's Dad is 6"4' on a short day, so I have a rough idea of what you can expect over the next 6 years. Once puberty kicks in, though, you're on your own as I have nothing to do with teenage boys - they are a completely different species!

coolcait

My granny always said:

"ye cannae fatten a thoroughbred!"

and

"the best things come in small packages"

and

"there's nothing like a right bonnie sonsie wean"

and

"thon's a right fine big sonsie wean"

and

"ye're a right fine big/sonsie boy/lassie"

and

"thon's a right bonnie wee wean"

and

"ye're a right fine wee lassie/wee boy"

My granny had the art of declaring every one of her children and grandchilden "right fine" or "right bonnie" - whatever their size. And however contradictory her statements :rotfl:.

But, if she felt there was a problem (and mum would usually have asked granny's opinion first) she'd be right in there - declaring that "there's something no' right wi' this wean".

(And she'd probably have agreed with your granny about a mother's place!)

Mums (and grannies and great-grannies) usually have an instinct for something not being right with growing children. Your instinct is that Isaac is growing and developing OK. Your knowledge and research confirms that.

Please don't let you health visitor make you doubt Isaac's progress. If you have to, call her bluff, and ask her to explain why she thinks there's a problem. I'll bet that she ends up confirming that there are no problems

BitterAndTwisted

When I was sent to boarding school at the age of nine I was given iron-tablets and cod-liver oil twice a day because they thought I was under-nourished. I wasn't, I was fiercely wiry and my mother was a very slinky six-footer. It's a crying shame that I'm not quite so wiry now.

Blackpool_Saver

I would call her out on it the cheeky mare, how dare she ask another child if they are being fed GRRRRRRRR

ecgirl07

maybe the health visitor has a care of duty to look out for children that are thinner than average as much as children who are overweight? they asked a throw away remark child answered honestly and the HV goes away happy - if a child answers with an un-natural story then a wee alarm bell would go off in the HV head to keep an eye on the child. Not something to take personally when its the HV doing their job, its not applicable in this situation but in the next house it might be.

rachbc

i stopped taking my daughter to the HV at 6 months as I would come bake crying everytime. Born on the 50th dropped to under the 20th and stayed there ever since. She's just be weighed at school and she is still there, she is about 35th for height so generally petite. We buy trousers with adjustable waists and she can't wear leggings and pjs are a nightmare -only primark and gap fit!

nonnatus

The charts in those ridiculous red books are meant as a GUIDE not a prescriptive chart which you mustn't fall outside of.
It's a gathering of statistics and the 80th Percentile line simply means that out of 100 children measured on a certain day, 80 of them were xft tall, so that is what they expect the "average" child to be. But 20 were NOT that tall!! and your Isaac is obviously one of the few, not the many.
I, like many others, had an AWFUL time with a Health Visitor and my second child. She was a horrendous woman who bullied and harrassed me at a time when I was already quite fragile. In the end I refused point blank to see her and took son to GP instead who told me my problem was a common one in the area and they were all just waiting for this deranged woman to retire...

:eek:

You sound like a great mum and Isaac sounds like he's going to make a good Basketball player

lisa26_2

When I was a kid my dad's favourite saying was 'she's not skinny, she's just tall, that's all!!'. unfortunately these days I'm more like you and put weight on easily if I'm not careful. I can sympathise however, its quite likely that I'll have this when my baby is born if it takes after its dad! DH is 6ft and generally weights between 9 and 9.5 stone. His BMI is always in the underweight zone no matter what he eats. When we were first together I tried to feed him up but soon realised its just the way he is, no amount of food will put weight on him.

Ignore the stupid health visitor, you know your child and it sounds like he knows that he's well looked after too!

SingleSue

With eldest, they were always worried about the disparity between his height and his weight....and at 18, nothing has changed, he is still tall and skinny to the point of being underweight but he eats more than the rest of us put together.

With youngest, he had his own little centiles for weight and height, he wasn't on any of the official ones and it gave them a wee bit of a fright but after a while (and after bone xrays which showed he had a slight growth problem - 20 months old but with bone age of 9 months), they relaxed as he was following his own below official centiles perfectly.

At 13, he is still very small in height but unfortunately, with all the high dose steroid treatment to try to get his severe asthma under control, he is a little over what he should be in weight.

On the other hand, the health visitor checks and the little red book helped me with middle son, he had always been chunky right from birth (we named him our little rugby player whilst we were still in hospital) but due to reflux and dietary problems, his weight was coming down at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, because his weight was still seen as being normal (albeit on a low centile), the doctor wasn't worried but we were, he had gone from being on around the 80th centile for weight to about the 7th centile....so we got the little red book out and asked the health visitor to fight our corner with the doctor and showed just how much he had lost and we got our referral.

It was then discovered that he had a bowel disorder and gross food intolerances.......he looks like our little (well not quite so little at age 15) rugby player again now.

busiscoming2

Take no notice. You know he is well fed. My two eldest were so skinny, when my dd went to secondary school her skirt was Ladybird (Woolies) and aged 7!!
She has plumped out a bit now but her brother is still VERY lanky, about 5ft 10" and weighs about 8 stone.

Whereas ds2 (different dad) got very tubby as he grew but now at 14 has grown into his weight IYSWIM.

I wouldn't bother with the HV anymore.