10 Month Old Not Gaining Weigh

Updated on March 13, 2017
N.T. asks from Victorville, CA
8 answers

My 10 months old only weight 14 lbs 6oz. We have a weight check with his doctor again next week and I'm thinking he will probably move forward with some testing. Anyone else have a baby this little?

He was 7lbs 4Oz at birth and gained at a good speed for several months.

He's been this weight plus or minus a few oz since November. He's been eating solids since he was 5 months and he breastfeeds on demand or has a bottle of breast milk when I'm at work. He eats a lot of regular foods now too and not just puréed baby food. He poops like 15 min after having any food even if it's puréed. So I'm feeling like his body is just not holding onto the nutrients. He is so ridiculously strong though and happy and healthy. So I haven't worried myself much until now. He still wears 3-6 month clothing. My daughter was a super chubby baby so this is completely different.

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R.A.

answers from Boston on

What Elaine/ Elena said , and add when he poops/pees.. this would be a great way to keep track and see patterns, etc. having this recorded before going to the pediatrician will be beneficial.

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E.B.

answers from Honolulu on

Since you have a check up scheduled for next week, I would suggest that starting immediately you keep a food journal. Be extremely specific.

The simplest way to do it is to use a legal pad or regular pad of paper, and use one page per day.

Write down the times your child eats, and write down exactly what he ate. Write things like "4 ounces of applesauce, unsweetened" (for example), and not just "snack". Note when he breastfeeds and for how long, and make sure that whoever gives him the bottle of breast milk when you're at work notes how many ounces were in the bottle and how many ounces he drank, and when.

You might also note what you're eating, since you're still nursing him.

This will be very helpful to the doctor.

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J.C.

answers from Philadelphia on

My kids had nothing but breast milk until 1 yo. I would feed him less food and make sure he is getting the bulk of his calories from BM or formula.

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N.B.

answers from Oklahoma City on

First thing I thought of was that formula and breast milk have 100% of his nutrients for the first year. Have you considered that baby food is about zero nutrition? You say he's eating regular foods now but is it full of the vitamins and nutrients that are in formula and breast milk?

Give him his bottle or breast first each time and see if he's just needing those packed nutrients.

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N.P.

answers from Chicago on

both my daughters were like that - sorry this is a book!! I read the responses, and I was told the same thing, and yes, of course I was making sure bottle/breast was first. I did keep a food journal and it was literally 1 teaspoon of baby puree X, 15 minutes breastfeeding, 7 on each breast, 2 blueberries. Good advice, but until you have been there it's hard to understand how stressful it is.

My older daughter, Tara, was also super tall for her age, so it looked worse on her, and because we were going through it the first time it was extremely stressful! She was wearing 12 - 18 months clothes in the winter but the summer she turned one and she didn't need the length for her arms and legs she wore 0 - 3 month onsies.

If you are breastfeeding make them weigh him before you nurse and after to make sure he is getting enough milk. Eliminate any dairy products from his diet, that was part of my daughter's issues. Every diaper of Tara's was this foul smelling white nastiness of loose poo. Well, actually it was 3 days of yucky then a day or two of normal, it was very weird. She ended up being allergic to rice, pears (I was drinking pear juice daily while nursing, so yeah, that was part of the problem) and cinnamon. She was so happy, and strong, and active and looked fine if her clothes were on. She had gone up to size 3 diapers at like 6 months and I remember when she was about 9 months old they were falling off of her, and I went to a neighbor to see if they had a size 2 diaper. That was when I really started to worry.

We had her tested for a whole bunch of stuff, one test would show something off, then the next would show that fine and something else off. We had her bowel movement tested for stuff. She had a barium swallow test. Tons of blood work. Cystic Fibrosis test. It's hard to remember all that they tested her for.

After I had my second I realized that Tara had NEVER asked for food. I fed her cause it was time, or because I thought she wanted it but after my second I realized that Tara was just curious about the food, not hungry. We had an inconclusive Celiac disease test and the biopsy for that came back negative (done a few months later when she had lost 2 pounds between 14 and 15 months). Years later I realized that she hadn't been eating gluten and that makes the test void, so we had the blood test redone when she lost 2 lbs between age 7 and 8, and it was a very definite negative that time.

Anyway, so at 17 months we took her to a pediatric endocronologist and he ordered some testing. At the same time she got a double ear infection and was put on antibiotics for that. We were told to feed her any time she asked for food, and the guy did some tests and we were to come back a month later. I think that she may have had a parasite or something because after those antibiotics she stopped having diarrhea, and she gained 2 lbs in a month! I was pissed at the doctor. He asked what we had done different and I said nothing, we hadn't changed anything. He said, "well she was in the latter stages of starvation, she had no fat pads on any of her fingers or toes, and now she's ok". I was like, you let me take her home when she was that close to dying??? He said that she was so happy and energetic he didn't see a reason to admit her. So, yeah, that still makes me mad all these years later.

Later I would learn to not freak out about her weight - she would be not an oz more from June when she had her annual physical until end of May and I would freak out then the week before her appointment she would literally gain two pounds. One time we were on vacation so we weighed her on the scale for luggage, and she had been on a ride where weight mattered, and we weighed her at home when we got home and all those times she weighed the same, let's say 50 lbs. She had weighed 52 the year before, so I was freaking out, sure there was something wrong, the day after we got back we had her doctor appointment and she weighed 54 lbs. I thought our scale was broke, but at home it was the same exact weight! She had gained 4 lbs over night, literally.

So, she's almost 18 now. Still super skinny but on the growth charts finally. Her younger sister is not on the charts though. I really think that it was a combination of some illness causing the diarrhea, not being born with a hunger mechanism and a super high metabolism.
The times I really worried was when their hair got brittle, that meant they weren't getting enough fats. ((Once it turned out to just be super cheap shampoo that was the issue, whew.))
When Tara was on a bottle we did the weight gain cocktail, it was a cup of milk, a cup of heavy cream, and a package of vanilla carnation instant breakfast. I would give it to her through out the day and she would take forever to drink any, we usually ended up driving around just so she would not be able to do anything but drink it. I could get 5 bites into her, that was it, 5, any food, didn't matter, she was not picky, she just stopped at 5 bites in a sitting. So I was offering her food all the time, waiting longer in between did not equal more food eaten, she wasn't hungry, she was eating to make me happy basically. The first time she asked for food was a week before she turned 4, I know the exact date it was so memorable. I had taken her off of milk 6 days earlier to try and solve her sleep issues (cause that was also the first day she slept through the night) and she ended up being hungry for once.

Anyway, that's my story, they are 14 and 17 now, still super active, they eat a lot, and every year their doctors tell them to have ice cream every night. I had doctor's orders to give my kids ice cream, they loved that. lol. The 14 year old weighs 87 lbs and is almost 5 ft tall, the 17 yr old just reached 110 (?), enough to donate blood. They both are having lots of allergy issues lately, and we have started testing again to figure out what is going on, cause they are weird.

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E.B.

answers from Beaumont on

What Elena B said. Great advice. Write it down in an easy format the doctor can scan easily. He's "strong, happy and healthy"...you'll get this figured out.

W.W.

answers from Washington DC on

Welcome back N.!! You've been gone awhile!

He's about 4 to 5 lbs behind where the "average" is.

you need to talk with your pediatrician to determine the best course of action for your son.

M.D.

answers from Washington DC on

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