Sweet Yet Sour

The Great Fattening Up

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Anna

One of the many new words that you learn when you become a parent is “percentile”.  I’ve heard this a lot lately and I’ve really started to hate that word…

Every time your child goes to the doctor for a “wellness” visit – which are generally every few months in the first year – they get weighed, measured from head to toe and their head circumference is measured.  These numbers are then placed on a chart for their growth.  This chart is then explained by the doctor using percentiles.  The chart and percentiles are averages of other kids.  For example, at Anna’s 6 month appointment her weight put her at the 10th percentile.  This means that 90 percent of the kids (whenever the chart was made) weighed more than Anna.  At Anna’s 9 month appointment her weight had dropped her down to the 3rd percentile.  According to our doctor it’s important for Anna to stay on her “weight curve”, i.e., stay at the 10th percentile instead of dropping down to the 3rd.  We were told to feed her more and try to get her to gain more weight.

When we arrived for Anna’s 12 month appointment the nurse weighed Anna 3 times on two different scales.  She mumbled something about “she’s dropped off her curve again” and then left.  The doctor came in and we spent 80% of the time talking about how Anna had only gained a pound since her 9 month appointment.  Apparently, in order to stay on the 3rd percentile weight curve she needed to have gained 3 pounds.  While Anna was climbing all over Mike and I and making lots of noise I tried to explain that Anna is a very busy girl and she’s just not willing to sit and eat for very long. Anna would much rather be playing than eating and most mealtimes disintegrate into her playing with her food pretty rapidly.

But inwardly I felt ashamed and worried that somehow this is an indication that I am a bad mom.  I feed Anna three meals a day, with snacks in between, try to make sure that she eats fruits, veggies, carbs and protein and try to make sure that she has plenty of water or milk.  And yet still she isn’t putting on the weight that our doctor wants her to have.  Contrary to how I look now, I was a lot like Anna when I was little and Mike’s mother also reported that Mike was slender too – so we do have a family history of small kids.  But still, I felt like the doctor was accusing me of neglecting my child and not feeding her.  It was enough to make me want to cry in the doctor’s office and honestly, I almost did.

The doctor told us that she wants us to feed Anna more fatty foods.  Apparently babies need fat for development. We were told to slather everything with butter, olive oil, ranch dressing or chocolate syrup.  If only my doctor would tell me that same thing!  We were also told to stop giving Anna liquids during meals and start giving her a lot more whole milk.  We were scheduled for a weight check in a month.

So now we are in the middle of what I am calling “The Great Fattening Up”.  If it’s possible to put cheese or butter on a food that I’m feeding Anna – then I pack it on.  Wednesday for breakfast I gave Anna bits of butter croissant with butter on it and yesterday she had a waffle with butter in every possible crevice.  I tried this morning to spray whipping cream on her tray and have her eat it and she just played with it until it all melted.

“The Great Fattening Up” has had two bad consequences.  First, I have a tendency to eat whatever Anna is eating, in part because she seems to want to eat whatever I’m having and partly because if she’s not eating it I don’t want to waste food.  I’m pretty sure if they weighed me in a month I will have gone above and beyond my weight curve…

Secondly, because I am so stressed about Anna gaining weight it makes mealtimes difficult.  One of the things I learned early on with Anna is that for babies and kids your energy makes a huge difference in their behavior.  When I would go to nurse her if I was stressed or upset, she would not nurse and would fuss instead.  If I’m angry about something it will affect her and make her grumpy too.  Since I’m feeling the pressure to have her put on the pounds when she refuses to eat something (which is often) I get stressed and angry.  This makes her get upset and mealtime doesn’t go well after that.  I want her to eat, not play with her food and when she does I get so mad I have to leave the room in order to calm down.  Sometimes Anna throws food and I think it’s partially because she’s figured out how to push my buttons.

I’m struggling to find foods that Anna will eat consistently and that will help her to gain weight.   Of late Anna loves fresh pear slices and canned apricots, not really fattening foods.  She’ll eat mac and cheese and buttered toast, but if I try to feed it to her two days in a row it will be refused.  We’ve started calling her the “Pez dispenser” because Anna will take a food in her mouth and then immediately spit it back out.  This is what she did today with the quesadilla and avocado I offered her for lunch.  And then she pointed at the pear slices and did her “dat” (which we are interpreting as “that”). This has also turned mealtime into me running around in the kitchen desperately trying to find things that Anna might (and can) eat since she’s refused whatever it was that I offered her in the first place.  If it sounds frustrating, it is.

On the bright side, now that Anna is a year old, she can have lots of things she couldn’t have before.  Peanut butter, honey, chocolate and ice cream are all fair game.  As soon as I can get her to eat these things, I think Anna might like them.   But I tried the other day to give Anna vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and she gave me this look as if to say, “Why the heck would I eat that? It’s cold and it tastes weird!”

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