Should We Worry About Baby Fat on… Babies?

Haven’t you heard of an ear thermometer!?

Gasp. This is not the first noise you want to hear when your baby is born. “What? What’s wrong?!” I struggled to sit up as best as a woman who’s just had her entire abdomen rearranged like a Rubik’s cube can do. Nurses, doctors, husband – all were staring at the baby I’d just popped out.  Finally someone answered me. “Nothing’s wrong,” the doctor said handing me my second son. “Except you just gave birth to a 3-month old.” At nearly eleven pounds he never even wore newborn clothes.

I have a lot of experience with fat babies. While Son #2 was my largest, sons #1 and #3 weren’t far behind at 9 and 10 pounds, respectively. Even Jelly Bean, so unbelievably tiny to us, was 8.5 pounds. And since I know someone is wondering, no I didn’t have gestational diabetes, 3 out of the 4 were not overdue and I was not overweight when I conceived nor when I gave birth. It’s just genetics. (Any single girls reading this, my advice to you: when you start dating a new guy, don’t worry about his job or hair loss or whether he has a unicorn fetish – ask him how much he weighed and how big his head was at birth. You can always switch jobs but trust me when I tell you that pushing out a bowling ball will scar you forever.) As my kids grew bigger, they have mostly stayed larger than average. All of which means I’ve had 10 years of practicing my polite smile – just one eye crinkle away from my assassin smile, FYI – while people have commented on my babies’ bigness.

Robert Duffy, president of Marc Jacobs, is getting a taste of what I’ve been going through. In a recent interview he talks about his 6-month-old daughter that he recently adopted with his husband Alex:

“Our biggest fight was that she was getting really heavy,” says Duffy. “I’d say, ‘She is being overfed.’ He’d say, ‘No she’s not, all babies are fat.’ Then I took her to the park one day and had her on a swing, and this lady said to me, ‘Why don’t you let your baby walk?’ I said that she can’t walk yet and she was like, ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ The lady thought she was two years old. I came home and was like, ‘Alex, she is eating too much.'” They consulted her pediatrician and stopped feeding Victoria milk at night. “I keep saying childhood obesity starts in infancy, and Alex says, ‘So does anorexia.'”

Dun-dun-dun! It’s the Fat Baby Paradox! Everyone run hysterically in circles! Grab the smelling salts before Anna Wintour gets a case of the vapors! Poll strangers on CNN.com! But seriously, eating disorders and obesity all in the same fraught conversation. And it’s not just a conversation for Hollywood types anymore*.

After I got over my confusion about why they were feeding Victoria milk at night in the first place (6-month old babies shouldn’t be drinking milk at all), I had to giggle imagining Robert and Alex having this argument because it so perfectly encapsulates the societal confusion at large (ahem) over big babies:

Babies are supposed to be fat! And yet babies and young children can be too fat to the point it harms their development.

Babies are naturally good at self-regulating food intake – they’re the gold standard of intuitive eaters! But only when they’re being fed properly – who knows if this is true for scientifically proven addictive foods like Girl Scout cookies.

Bigger babies tend to be healthier babies – the babies with the worst health outcomes are the teeny tiny ones! But there is a difference between a baby chunked out on breast milk and one sucking down French fries as a first food.

And let’s not forget how squishably fun dimply chubby baby thighs are! I have no retort to that – baby thighs are a work of art! As are tushies!

So what’s a parent to do? Especially when pediatricians are sounding the alarm at new-parent visits. Mathew Gillman, a Hardvard pediatrician and epidemiologist, says, “Excess or accelerated weight gain even in the first four or six months of life may be setting up kids for overweight, for higher blood pressure, maybe even for asthma over the first years in childhood.” But nobody is advocating putting baby on a diet either. Most pediatricians these days are keeping an eye on the child’s growth charts (are their height and weight staying proportional?) rather than going by weight alone. Although even that can be tricky as Gym Buddy Krista (who is also a doula and in grad school when she’s not answering my hysterical texts about how I made cookies this weekend with cream that was so expired I might as well have used bleu cheese. And then tried to cover up by making “frosting” out of chocolate chips and coconut extract which made the chocolate seize and made my cookies both smelly and ugly, pretty much ensuring none of you will ever show up at my house for dinner. ANYHOW.) points out that the charts are calibrated for formula-fed babies and breast-fed babies often follow a different growth arc.

For myself, just like I think a pregnant woman’s weight gain should be between her and her doctor, I think that other people’s baby’s weights are not my business so I stick to gushing about how cuddly and adorable and wizened (right??) their infants look. (Exception: I have been known to squee over delicious chubby cheeks and try to nom them. And if that’s wrong I don’t ever want to be right.) Similarly I try to tune out people’s comments about my own babies. But it’s hard in a culture as weight-obsessed as ours. The scrutiny starts the second you announce you’re pregnant – oh look! The tabloids have already determined that preggo Hillary Duff is “healthy” while Jessica Simpson is “so fat she’s unrecognizable” – and while we all know that moms are even more pressured after giving birth, now it’s extending to their babies as well?

What’s your take: Do you worry about babies getting too fat? Would you ever comment on a friend’s baby’s weight? A stranger’s baby’s? Anyone else think comparing H.Duff and J.Simp is abhorrent??

 

47 Comments

  1. Hilary Duff is pregnant? I thought she was like 16 … I am so far behind.

    Chubby babies are ADORABLE. I don’t have any kids, and I don’t know anything about raising healthy kids, but I do love some pinchable baby cheeks.

  2. I don’t worry about babies getting too fat, I worry much more about them getting high quality food, and being loved and having happy, safe homes. And I don’t say anything to strangers unless it’s positive (you know, if you don’t have anything nice to say….don’t say anything at all). And all my friends who have babies love them dearly, and are fantastic parents who are on top of nutrition, so honestly…I’m so not concerned if their babies happen to be on the high side of the weight charts. Especially because they’re all super long babies. Super. duper. long. It weirds me out that one of them is 6 months old, and half my height already. I’ll admit I’m short, but…he is a long baby.

    Interestingly, to add to the br*st-fed v. formula-fed, a hospital in Toronto came up with further charts based on ethnicity of the babies. This happened because southeast asian babies were being charted as underweight, when they were not, and some caucasian babies were being charted as overweight, when they weren’t necessarily. See link:

    http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/birthweights.php

    • Thank you for the link! So interesting!! That def. feels a need. And this: ” I worry much more about them getting high quality food, and being loved and having happy, safe homes.” IS way more important:)

  3. My oldest daughter was born a week early and was 8lbs 8ozs. she was a csection. She latched on really well, ate fine and no issues. Happy kid.
    My youngest was going to be a planned csection because I was a high risk pregnancy. She decided she would come at almost a month early, csection as well.. Weight was a whopping 7lbs 4ozs. holy fuck. I seriously can’t even imagine what she would have weighed if she cooked longer. She couldn’t latch on from being early they told us, after we got home she had no issues and gained 1lb in 1 week. Alrightie. Happy kids. Well the little one has Autism but she’s still happy majority of the time.

    I think large + baby is different than large, or very large and a kid who is walking. kwim? There is a little kid at my daughters school and I just see a very hard future. 🙁

  4. My son was a week late and was 8 lbs, 14 oz. One of the first things I remember hearing the nurses say (ahem, *exclaim*) was “Oh my goodness, he must be 10 pounds!!!” (He was stuck and rather swollen by the time he finally decided to let go of his home and come out a week late and via a nasty c/s.) Even though he had latch issues, I had b/f issues and he was jaundiced, he still managed to gain almost a pound his first week home!! At 4 weeks, people thought he was 4 months old by his size. By three months, he was 15 pounds. And then he stayed there until he hit his 6 month appointment, where he gained just a couple ounces. And I will never forget what my mother-in-law said to me – I was 90/10 breastfeeding/formula feeding, and we intro’d solids after the 6 month appointment. She said “Oh it’s about time he ate real food. He’s getting too skinny.” Several years later, I can still hear that comment – nothing I did was right when it came to his weight!

    Now, at 5 years old, he is in the 80th percentile for height and 50th for weight – meaning he’s super duper skinny! Total reversal!

    My thing is that babies should be “fat,” and toddlers too – but ONLY if they’re eating nutritiously. It’s one thing if a 9 month old baby is “fat” and being breastfed or on formula and healthy baby foods like pureed carrots and peas – it’s another if a 9 month old baby is “fat” and eats Fruit Loops, juice, and cut up hot dogs all day, most days of the week.

  5. I had gestational diabetes and I had skinny babies. And I hated the growth charts with a passion. My son was born at 5lbs15oz. He climbed up to the fiftieth percentile by six months. And he’d fallen completely off the weight chart by a year. From his first birthday until his second we went to the pediatrician’s office every six weeks. At one point they were ready to check his human growth hormone. And then at his second birthday he was back on the charts. He was always perfectly healthy and not so skinny that you’d notice. (the kid had rolls on his rolls). He was just small for his age. And no one seemed to notice/care that I’m a tiny girl myself. At five, he’s skinny as a rail and can do more pullups than I can.

    His pediatrician told me at his last check up that she no longer worries about the skinny kids anymore. She says that McDonald’s catches them right up. Doesn’t that just inspire you?

    Having said that, one of my friends little girl is obese and I don’t think the family really knows. They know she’s chubby, but that’s all. At her three year well visit, her pediatrician scolded her and said that he didn’t want the girl to gain any weight that year. If anything to lose weight. Within a month, she’d gained another ten lbs. So they switched pediatricians. She’s a few months younger than my son and weighs over thirty lbs more. I’ve never mentioned it to her and I doubt I will. I don’t think I could do anything, but alienate the family by bringing it up.

    • Ack, McDonald’s??? SO many, many things wrong with that statement, especially coming from a pediatrician!

    • Okay this: “His pediatrician told me at his last check up that she no longer worries about the skinny kids anymore. She says that McDonald’s catches them right up.” is frightening. And your friend’s daughter’s story is heartbreaking too.

  6. I have a huge head… my husband has a huge head… my vagina is screwed.

  7. I am only 5 feet tall, so even though my daughter was born fairly small, I started getting the “You’re huge” and “You look ready to pop” comments at about 6 months. Since birth she has managed to drop off of the growth charts, just because I’m small and my husband is small. The doctor assures us she’s healthy. Now everyone comments on how little she is. I don’t know. I think part of being a mother is being judged constantly. It’s not fun.

    It is amazing to see my daughter next to a baby that is up in the 90% range. The difference in size is amazing.

    • I totally agree with this: ” I think part of being a mother is being judged constantly. It’s not fun.” Like a previous commenter said, you just can’t win.

  8. i looove squishy babies. both my boys have been a bit larger than average, though not huge to me (8 lbs 11 oz and 9 lbs 4 oz at birth) and have stayed in the 90th+ percentiles on the growth charts. my younger son is built like a tank and shares clothes with his brother (granted, they’re 13 months apart so it’s not too much of a stretch). sometimes i get comments on how “huge” they are but mostly i get people asking if they’re twins. a lot. as in, every time i step out of the house. 🙂 (i not-so-secretly i love it.)

    it was funny to see your post today since a few weeks ago, a bit after my son’s belated 1 year well check, i received a letter from the pediatrician.

    “we noticed at your son’s last well check that his BMI was higher than average. here are some things you can do!”

    made me feel great. nothing like a little extra heaping of mommy guilt. 😉 but i know that i’m doing my best to feed my kids well, and i’m not worried about them.

    and as for your last question…i really wish people would just back off. i know it’s not ever going to happen, but celebrity or not, i don’t think weight and appearance should be a domain for public discussion.

    M. Lindsay–thanks for posting that adjusted birthweight chart! really interesting. i checked it and with ethnicity factored in my kids fall in the 80% range, rather than the upper 90%, which makes more sense to me. baby growth charts are kind of like the BMI charts…they can be useful occasionally as a very general starting point, but there is so much that isn’t factored in that they shouldn’t be considered reliable indicators of health.

    • So glad that Meghan Linsday’s chart could help you!! It def. makes sense to adjust for things like ethnicity. And people always ask me if my two oldest are twins too! They’re 18 months apart but have pretty much been the same size for years now. (Although the younger one outgrew the older one last year…)

    • I totally agree about the BMI being a starting point. My BMI says 102lbs is a healthy weight for me….I’m a small thin person and generally weigh around 120lbs. The only time I ever reached 107lbs I had to eat less than 500 calories a day and looked so thin that my stomach was caved in and I wore a size 0 pants…I would probably be considered anorexic if I ever reached 102lbs as my BMI says is healthy for my height.

      I came across this because I was concerned about how chubby my second son is at three months old. My first son was always a tiny baby and fit into newborn sizes at 3 months. So I was shocked and concerned when my second son is already fitting into 12 month clothes at 3 months. The only difference in feeding that I’ve done between the two is that my first son was formula fed and my second breastfed. Also, my second son is a very long baby. Reading this has really put my mind at ease. I appreciate you taking the time to write this! I feel good knowing I don’t have anything to worry about.

  9. Man! We’re obsessing over babies’ weights now? What’s next, weighing the fetus?!?!
    I agree with M. Lindsay; we need to be more concerned about a baby’s/ child’s nutrition and well- being than an outdated growth chart.
    And the media needs to back off the pregnant ladies.

  10. ahhhhh I could go on and on but more importantly was my own HUH? realization moment it may not be just us crazy americans.
    I lived in a different country with my girl when she was little (about 6 mths to 11) and was constantly stopped on the streets THERE by strangers remarking how ‘enormous’ she was!

    that completely surprised me.
    we may be passing our craziness on to others…

    • Interesting! I had no idea it was like that in other cultures as well. Although I wonder if perhaps in 3rd world countries “enormous” is a compliment?

  11. I also gave birth to “3 month old” babies. (Actually, they were a mere 8lb15oz and 10lb exactly. No Diabetes.) A friend and I gave birth on the same day, and I have a hilarious picture of both babies next to each other on a blanket at four days old. It looks like mine could eat hers in two gulps.

    As long as they’re breast-fed exclusively, you don’t even have to THINK about whether or not they’re eating too much.

    • Haha – when our son was in the nursery, he ended up being in the NICU for a few hours. They put him next to a teeeeny preemie. The preemie’s dad looked at our baby and then looked at us and said, “What’s he in for? He eat all the babies in the regular nursery?!”

  12. I love your new criteria for choosing a mate – head size and birth weight! That made me laugh. I always thought baby fat was a non-issue, until I saw that one gigantic baby that made the news – do you remember? I forget how big he was. I think it’s scary that we are so weight obsessed that it is coming down to the infant level. However, it is important that new mothers be educated on how to properly feed their children. If they are doing the right things and the baby is large, I don’t think that should be cause for concern. I’ve known plenty of chubby babies who grew into slim children and teens and I’ve seen tiny babies become fat kids. I think it’s important to be educated and beyond that, NOT obsess.

  13. Anyone who’s concerned about fat babies has clearly drunk the “obesity PANIC!!!” Kool-Aid.

  14. I don’t, but I think it’s another issue with our food disordered society, however, we now know that baby-led eating (or drinking) will solve the problem 🙂

  15. I had a 7lb. baby then a 9lb. baby. I tell people that’s why I quit at 2 kids — they were getting 2 lbs bigger each kid! 🙂 Because of my 9 pounder, I tell moms with chubby babies, and have trained my kids (now teens that babysit) to also say, “What a healthy baby!!” I live in Texas where some cultures love to see there kids run around with only a diaper and let’s throw some Coca-Cola in the bottle just for funsies, and THAT crawls all over me — but those kids aren’t usually fat, but they are generally filthy, staying up until all hours and hearing language I don’t want around my pets. Like M. Lindsay said, it’s an overall lifestyle — love your kids and you will generally feed them well, or as well as you know how.

  16. I’m like you, Charlotte. My boys were 10lbs, 9lb 5 oz, and 9lb 13 oz, respectively. I gained between 20 and 25 pounds with each pregnancy and did not have gestational diabetes with any of them. While my kids topped the growth chart at the beginning, by 3-6 months of breastfeeding they were actually at the low end of the chart. My oldest was actually considered “failure to thrive” and I had to supplement with formula after 6 months. (After weighing 10 lbs at birth, he only weighed 13lbs at six months.) Now that they are 10, 8 and 2, they are all around the 40th percentile. I’d rather have a big baby than a small 6-7lb one!

    • Yes, my kids evened right out on the growth charts too. (Okay, #2 and #3 have stayed relatively large – 80th percentile but #1 is about 40th and #4 is a solid 50th!)

  17. OMG, this makes me want to call my fiance’s mom and demand to know how big her boys were at birth! Thank god it’s too early to call there 😀 I’m trying to hide the crazy until after the wedding.

    • ” I’m trying to hide the crazy until after the wedding.” Hahahah! Maybe there’s a casual way to work it into conversation? “So, mom, how’s your perineum after Bobby’s birth – you have to get any stitches??” 😉

  18. When we left the hospital with our first baby, the nurses told us to give her 35 ml of formula and then up it 2 ml a day. (before anyone gets on the breastfeeding rant, we tried, hired the L.C., used all the gadgets and pumped for three months….but still had to mostly formula feed. 2nd baby was exclusively B.F’d) When we told this to the nurse on our well baby visit (Yay Canada health care!) she looked at us very oddly. Apparently most people don’t measure formula down the the exact ml.
    Our pediatrician said it best. Fill the bottle a little more then she usually eats. When she feels done, she’ll stop. If she starts finishing the bottles, fill them a bit more. Babies know how much they need. They will stop when they are full. Even with our five year old, we still go mostly by this rule. She eats as much at a meal as she wants. The only thing we limit is treats. Sometimes she eats almost as much as I do, other days she will eat barely an entire sandwich in a day. Her body tells her, and she listens.
    It drives me crazy when our parents visit and make comments on how much a child eats. My parents seem to be obsessed with half bananas. The idea that a child could eat an entire banana astounds them. I’m constantly finding half bananas in our fruit bowl when they are visiting. It’s a banana! It’s not like I’m giving them full sized chocolate bars!! My kids are both at very healthy weights and it is entirely self regulated. I give them healthy food, they eat what their body tells them to. I wish I could do it as easily as they do!

    • “It drives me crazy when our parents visit and make comments on how much a child eats.” Me too,sister, me too.

  19. I’m worried about my kids’ futures, and I don’t want them to struggle with being overweight. I get comments on how chubby my toddler is, and I was secretly pleased to learn that he’s in the 40th percentile for weight. Smaller than average! The comments come because he has a GINORMOUS head and inherently chubby cheeks. So with clothes on he looks like a chubby kid, but naked he looks like a bobble head! I don’t like that I was pleased that he was only 40th% though. If he was in the 90%, that should be ok with me too. I definitely struggle with the “Obesity Panic!” Kool Aid!

  20. As long as they are eating right, I don’t think babies’ weight should be as much of a factor. If there is a problem where they don’t stop eating or their parents are feeding them french fries exclusively, that would be cause for concern but these kids need a bit of fat stores to help their bones and brains develop.

    Also, a lot of the difference between Hilary Duff and Jessica Simpson is the type of clothes in which they are photographed. Jessica tends to wear thick layers or large prints, thereby making her look larger than Hilary’s plainer wardrobe.

    • Good call on Hillary and Jessica’s clothing. Poor Jessica – I was never a huge fan of hers when she was first starting out but since all of this nonsense about her weight has sprung up I find myself more and more on her team…

  21. I LOVE fat babies. If someone doesn’t want theirs I will take it. People don’t understand that kids are growing. Most of them grow OUT and then UP. We certainly shouldn’t be concerned they are overweight as I think this is impossible unless you are intentionally trying to kill your baby in which case definitely give me the fat babies to love!! 🙂 lol

    • This: “Most of them grow OUT and then UP. ” is SO TRUE. And something we need to remind teens going through growth spurts as well.

  22. I had a small baby and I can tell you, the advice about positive comments goes for them too. The first comment I heard about it was “wow, what a svelte kid! None of that baby chubbieness there!”. The ped wanted me to rent a high-precision scale and weigh before and after BFing AND supplement. I quit going to the ped, and kept BFing her.
    When we visit, my MIL says ‘don’t you feed this child? Look at her pack that food down!’ and by the end of the weekend she’s saying ‘holy cow does this kid ever stop eating?’. Yet the routine repeats at every visit.
    She hovers between the 40th and 50th percentile, always has. You know what else people comment on? How awake and aware she’s always been, how much and how varied she eats. The kid has an inferno for a metabolism. Yet they don’t seem to realise that they’re talking out both sides of their mouths about her size and energy needs.

  23. My son was 7lb 6oz. My daughter was 8lb 2oz, both with ginormous heads. However, I remember cringing while well meaning family members made comments about my 2 month old daughter needing weight watchers because she was well over 10 pounds just on breast milk.

    I think all babies are beautiful. However I think the chubby ones are just more delicious.

  24. I gave birth to a small pot roast – 5 pounds even. I had one of those lovely pregnancies where morning sickness lasted all day, everyday until my 8th month, which, with a history of anorexia, made for some pretty harsh judgments from my doctor (and everyone else). My daughter is back “on track” with the growth curve, and I’m trying as hard as I can to supply her with lovely little leg rolls, but I get a lot of comments about how slight she is; why don’t I feed her more, do I eat enough, etc. Nothing like pressure to help with lactation :)! It concerns me that folks might take away the idea that they need to micromanage their baby’s diet, instead of letting the natural, instinctual eating process, which babies are so good at achieving, work itself out.

  25. Love the photo of this baby looks awesome her eyes i like it..

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