A great article, on a issue that irks me to no end. I have blogged before on how I think that kids are being fattened up right from the get -go as babies.Here’s my rant from my children’s blog about Ivy’s check-up in 2006…
Anyways, her new stats are 22.1 lbs and 28.5 inches tall and I am so glad we don’t have to go back for a while. The latest thing this time was that because her weight didn’t keep up with her height, I should be supplementing her with formula at night. Where do I even start ranting with that? There’s not even enough room for my rant. At least Mike snipped at her that Ivy is just fine on breastmilk and organic babyfood and we wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon.
No wonder the rates of obese children are thru the roof…what the HELL would Ivy need with 2 different sources of liquid food? Besides the fact that I nursed a newborn AND a toddler at the same time and they both thrived, all of a sudden, its not enough for one 10 month old? The taps run dry or something? What about the fact that not only is she crawling and beyond active, she’s also been walking holding on to things? What about the fact that she has tall parents? She still gained weight for god’s sake! 2 lbs!
I get so mad that they follow those @#$@#$ growth charts like they are a bible and cause stress to parents. If I didn’t know better, I might have rushed out to buy formula and freaked out that she wasn’t thriving. How many parents have they done that too? Interfered with a healthy, thriving feeding (breast or bottle) relationship only to cram more calories into the babies and worry parents for no reason?
Ugh. The whole of society is obsessed with weight and look where it starts for pete’s sake. First they can’t gain enough and they ask you to cram more calories in your baby, BUT then you are asked to restrict their diets when they are overweight. How about moderate eating habits throughout their lives starting right when they attempt solids?? How about trusting that as long as you provide amply and they eat and refuse what they want, and are gaining some weight, that’s its natures way specific to each little body? All babies are different, heck, look at my two! One mammoth pudgy boy who was 25 lbs at 4 months old, and my girl who’s barely 22lbs at 10 months. SAME FOOD SOURCE PEOPLE!!! Its not like it was chocolate milk for Kade and skim for Ivy. Different kids! Get over it! Burn the charts!
If you’re still reading, thanks for hanging in there LOL! I’m done. Just think,no more vax visits and rants until 18 months. And least they didn’t harass me about delaying the MMR shot and not getting the chicken pox one…that’s new.
Now that I soap-boxed again on this issue, The Times article:
THOUSANDS of obese and overweight babies, fattened by mothers on medical advice, are to be identified by National Health Service charts.
Health experts say the growth measurements, introduced at the start of this month, should end the “severe cultural problem” of encouraging babies to put on a lot of weight too quickly.
For the first time the tables, drawn up by the World Health Organisation, are based entirely on the rate of growth of breastfed babies, which tend to put on weight more slowly than those given formula milk in their first year.
The figures used until now have been based mainly on formula-fed babies. This has meant breastfeeding mothers have been wrongly told to “feed up” their infants, putting them at risk of obesity. This problem afflicts many bottle-fed babies.
Tim Cole, professor of medical statistics at the Institute of Child Health at University College London, and one of the experts who has adapted the charts for Britain, said: “We have this severe cultural problem, which is that babies are expected to grow fast.
“What this chart is trying to do is to suggest that babies shouldn’t be growing so fast and that they shouldn’t be as big.”
Cole added: “The way breastfed babies grow will now become the norm. With the previous charts a breastfed baby could be growing perfectly normally but would appear to the health visitor not to be growing as fast as the charts recommended, so there might have been pressure to wean early [on to solid foods or formula milk].
“Thin babies will [now] not appear to be so thin and fat babies will appear to be more fat. The fat babies are likely to be formula fed, growing very fast and developing problems with obesity.”
Cole has been advised by paediatricians that some obese babies are twice average weight by their first birthday.
Rapid weight gain in the first nine months of a baby girl’s life could make her more likely to be overweight later in childhood, according to research by Bristol and Cambridge universities.
The Child Growth Foundation, which has been campaigning for the charts, says breastfed babies are, on average, 1lb lighter than those fed solely on formula milk at 12 months. Tam Fry, who chairs the foundation, said: “When babies are being overfed this will become more noticeable.”
Fewer than one in two mothers still breastfeed at six weeks and this falls to 25% at six months. Fewer than 1% of mothers follow official advice to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of an infant’s life.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “The new charts will not only provide more accurate data but will also help professionals and parents to identify early signs of overweight or obesity and provide support.”