This gorgeous kid is now four. When she was a baby her weight was off the charts, so was her length. (Although, only an average 7 pounds, 6 oz at birth). She was entirely breast-fed at the time of this photo (approx. 5 months old).
Apparently if we had lived in the United States of America she could have been denied health insurance on account of her weight. Utterly absurd. You have to read it to believe it.
Her body did what it needed to do when she was a baby and it does what it needs to do now. Healthy.
This is her now, aged four, with her fat little baby brother. She is still very tall.
On another note, reading joy over at the Fifth Carnival of Feminist Parenting. Clickity click.
blue milk 
My babies were little fatties and so very lovely. Our doctor never said a word. I didn’t realize how fortunate I was for that.
I’m convinced that American mothers are going to start starving themselves again to try and keep birth weight down. I already see WAY too much about how “big” the baby is and inductions for big baby are rising rapidly even though it’s contradicted and discouraged by medical organizations. Horrific move by insurance companies. 😦
Yeah, the state of health insurance in this country is a sick joke. I’ve had to tangle with it TWICE now over the most piddling things, and am ready to give up and move.
That is truly shocking. Reminds me of when I took my 8 week old baby for his first health check, at the Child Health Clinic, I was barked at that I’d been overfeeding (breastfeeding) him, he was too big… then the nurse plotted his weight on the chart and it seemed to follow the 75th percentile to me… I was incredibly fragile at the time (wonder why?) and I left in tears. Although it’d be much, much worse if your baby was a slow-gainer. and btw, both of your children are gorgeous!
I want to hold both those babies and say ‘Hello gorgeous chub-chub’, am I a tiny bit mad?
Adding anecdotes from my family – I was a smallish baby (I think, looking at photos), breastfed, and I’ve always been short and slim. People remarked on what a little fatty my brother was (including me), until he turned 4, got skinny and has stayed that way ever since. He was bottle-fed *shrug*
And another family friend, who had her son two weeks after Mum had me (our families are still all close, it’s really something to grow up with other people like that), had a bigger baby – who was skinny for a good proportion of his life (until he discovered cooking for himself).
My babies were just as chubby, but luckily we’ve always had great pediatricians who said they couldn’t get *too* fat on breastmilk alone. At six and nine, they’re now both long and not fat in the least.
Yr doin it rite.
I just adore her dimpled elbows. And his thighs! I’m not terribly nostalgic for those infant days – I’m a nicer person when not sleep deprived – but I do completely melt when I see infants who remind me a little of how my own once were. Yours are (and were) just wonderful.
What a weird ole world we are living in. I love the “lacquer band” arms of 100% breastfed bubs, and Lauca looks delightful. Squishy and smooshy *melt*. Mine were all the same. Even my exclusively breastfed twins popped the chart for height and weight.
I understand where your all coming from, my son Ethan was born three weeks premature and for a long time his weight was an issue for us. Being a first time parent didnt make it any easier to handle. I would have given anything to have had an extra few pounds on him. I thought that eating and growing were a healthy sign we all know its different for every child so who has the right to judge.
Different issue, but related concept: our son took too long to talk. He eventually did (in two languages, probably the reason), and now won’t stop. But the pediatrician, who is a wonderful woman, was a bit concerned and so we went through all the hoops. Meanwhile, my linguist friends told me that from the point of view of their science, there simply is no standard for language development that will apply to every case. As with weight, all our models are based on averages of data sets, some of which may be relatively old, or made in specific countries, omit outliers, and are therefore empirically limited.
Probably the same set of cautions would apply to the Body Mass Index that health care insurers rely on.
As for US insurance, don’t get me started…
It’s catching on in my country too–‘obesity begins at six months’. One mother actually made her four year old son jog all the way to our home because her paed had said he’s overweight, even though he’s pretty active in school and gets plenty of exercise.
Ridiculous, I tell you.
Ugh, why the fetishatizion of fat babies or skinny babies? We’re all so obsessed with the “charts”. Your baby is gonna do what he’s gonna do–very little of it is up to you.
My baby was 100% breastfed on demand all night and all day, and rather on the slim side. Of course I was worried. To make myself feel better about this when I saw a huge fat baby, I thought to myself “Oh, that baby is probably bottle-fed.”
Now I see people here feeling the need to defend their fat 100% breastfed babies… yay for you, at one point I would have loved to be you… with your apparently superior milk-making capacities.
EVERYONE STOP WORRYING AND JUST ENJOY YOUR BABIES. And doctors are not god, I should know, I am married to one.