Low weight gain on formula?

[Adela Quested]

Hello ladies,

My LO is 14 weeks old and is exclusively BF but has not been putting on weight at all for the past month cry:) and long story short, I have pretty much been told that I will have to give him formula. Well he has to grow! So it looks like I will be joining you in here very soon and I have lots of questions

I'm wondering if any of you have had problems with your baby gaining weight on formula? And if so, what your HV or doctor suggested?

I'm just curious as I wonder what they are going to do if LO still isn't growing enough and what might possibly be going on there.

This is really broad but I would appreciate hearing your thoughts!

 

[summer rain]

Hi Adele

my sister was put onto formula for the same reasons and she still never really gained weight properly. Lack of weight gain/losing weight can be due to a UTI (often the only symptom of this in babies is lack of weight gain), metabolic problem or allergies so they should really refer you to rule this out before switching completely to formula. My son had the same problem as yours and it was decided to the allergies he was discovered to have that no formula on the market would be safe to give him; so I was encouraged to continue BF him and he was very closely monitored.

Sophie x

 

[Adela Quested]

Thank you for this - we have an appt with the paediatrician on Thursday so I will bring this up. I don't think they will be very receptive (it has always been "he's not gaining - formula, formula, formula!") but we shall see.

I did ask what they would do if he didn't gain on formula but it was obvious that my question was not really appreciated! I got no answer.

(BTW hope nobody minds me asking this in here - I am totally in favour of mums choosing the best solution for their own situations so you will hear no criticism of FF from me )

 

[OmarsMum]

Hi hun, u can ask here, no one will get offended or upset. Some FF LOs have problems with adding weight due to several reasons like intolerance, reflux, feeding very little, etc. My cousin switched to formula at around 4 months because of her LO weight gain issues but it didnt really make much difference. Her LO is a small baby, now at 15 months she's still petite & slim at the 10th percentile, she drinks 4 bottles & eats reasonable amount of food. If ur LO is following the same percentile there is nothing to worry about. U can also top up with formula if her Dr is concerned & see how it goes, if it doesnt work u can always stop. Good luck hun xx

 

[Seity]

My LO wasn't gaining weight either and so I switched to combo feeding. He gained weight immediately. If he hadn't, then they would have looked into some other cause for the low weight gain like some kind of digestive problem. Since he did gain weight we knew it was a low milk issue. I have managed to continue combo feeding him for just over 5 months now, so you don't have to exclusively FF if you don't wish to.

 

[sleeping bubs]

my lo has low weight gain on formula and he is on high calorie milk, he has 3 bottles a day in total between 12-18oz of milk a day and 3meals a day. But got a dietition (first one) 3rd Dec to see if we can try anything else. However he was small when he was born and both I and OH are to. He weighed 4lb 7oz at birth and now 14m he weighs 15lb 12oz

 

[summer rain]

Hi

I do find over here at least, pediatricians are keen to find any underlying causes so hopefully yours will be like that also. My youngest had the same problem as my middle son, but it was never established what he was allergic to. The hv and my gp refused to refer us, so out of desperation I tried a partially hydrolyzed formula, a risky strategy as my other son had such a severe dairy allergy but I was getting no help or support. He was ok on the formula and did start to gain a bit of weight but it wasn't as much as when he was EBF and he stopped really gaining at all until he was about one year. I do wish I'd pushed more for a referral as formula was no magic fix but it's water under the bridge now.

 

[Adela Quested]

Thank you all for your responses, I really appreciate it!

I am so fed up with the HV system here, they are so pushy and bossy and basically telling me how I should be bringing up my son (telling us we must do CIO etc). I am not holding out much hope for the paediatrician but we will see!

I'll let you know how it goes ...

 

[summer rain]

Hi

The HV system is like that in some places here, I remember with my youngest I was promised a chance to see the paediatrician at a clinic in another area instead I saw a young, inexperienced HV no doubt with no kids of her own; who just kept telling me monotonously (sp?) to take a yield of my milk for every feed and feed him that instead and then see (I could tell she was thinking my supply had gone to zero overnight); she wouldn't look at my son's red book and the fact that this problem started when he had his immunisation before that he was gaining 1lb a week; nor my other son's book which I also brought that showed the exact same pattern of massive weight gain then failing to thrive and all the notes put in there by various medical professionals that it was due to allergies.

She also tried to say he'd lost a lot of weight from being weighed a few days earlier; it was only a matter of grams (less than 10 as far as I remember) and the calibration of that scale could have been different to the one in the local clinic but she kept saying I needed to do this whole yield thing because otherwise I obviously didn't care about my son. I do hope the paediatricians are like the ones you get here. There is nothing wrong with formula but I see so many times formula being pushed as a solution to what are always automatically assumed to be supply issues, and then when it turns out not to be; it is often too late and you'll never get an apology off any of these HVs etc. I did notice in that area; and its not obligatory to deal with HVs in the UK that the women in the clinic were all either very young mums or women from abroad who didn't speak English well; I think the bullying HVs had seen a captive audience and convinced them they were somehow obliged to go and get their baby weighed every week. On my way out I heard the odds and ends of several lectures being given to various mums and dads for their baby not gaining enough or gaining too much (including FF babies in both categories) and some of them were leaving in tears. Sometimes these people are on a power trip and you can do no right by them.

Soph x

 

[JayeD]

I was BF'ing until 2 months. LO just wasn't getting enough to eat from my milk. I couldn't produce enough.

After dealing with a problem my SIL encountered last month with her son not gaining weight on formula, my best advice: follow the mixing instructions on the packaging! If someone tries to tell you that you can water down the formula to help save you money, don't do it! At 6 months old, my nephew was still 12 lbs because of this bad advice (he has gained 3 lbs in the past month after I advised my SIL of the proper mixing instructions). A woman in Florida tried doing this with her baby and her baby died from starvation since they weren't getting the nutrients they needed.

 

[Adela Quested]

After dealing with a problem my SIL encountered last month with her son not gaining weight on formula, my best advice: follow the mixing instructions on the packaging! If someone tries to tell you that you can water down the formula to help save you money, don't do it! At 6 months old, my nephew was still 12 lbs because of this bad advice (he has gained 3 lbs in the past month after I advised my SIL of the proper mixing instructions). A woman in Florida tried doing this with her baby and her baby died from starvation since they weren't getting the nutrients they needed.

Thank you - yes I read your thread and I am so glad that you were able to save your nephew.

It seems obvious to me that you should follow the instructions on the packaging but as your experience has showed, common sense is not always that common! Needless to say we will not be skimping on formula if that's the route we need to go down.

 

[blahblahblah]

I don't know a lot about breastfeeding, but as I understand it your diet heavily affects the make up of your milk. Maybe it would be worth asking the ladies in the BFing section, or the paediatrician about whether there are any diet changes that might help? Some BF'ers get their LO's piling on the pounds, so maybe they can tell you the secret ? If you're really lucky you might have to eat cream cakes every day or something

If LO has an intolerance then it might be tricky to find a suitable formula. Most LO's gain at least reasonably well on formula though, unless there is an underlying problem.

 

[summer rain]

Diet doesn't dramatically affect the calorie/fat content of your milk, if someone doesn't eat properly while breastfeeding they would have to be really starving to dramatically change the nutritional value of their milk; but usually it just affects the mum (with tiredness; losing weight herself etc). Thats why you will often see pictures of famine victims where the mother is skeletal but her breastfed child is still relatively ok. The only thing diet can really have an impact on is if your baby has an intolerance or allergy, in some cases that food coming through the milk can affect weight gain. There are also some rare disorders, i.e. PKU where babies are unable to metabolise breast milk but in those cases they'd be unable to metabolise any formula either unless it was a special one made for that disorder in particular. Some babies just gain weight better than others; be they on formula or breastmilk.

 

[summer rain]

I was BF'ing until 2 months. LO just wasn't getting enough to eat from my milk. I couldn't produce enough.

After dealing with a problem my SIL encountered last month with her son not gaining weight on formula, my best advice: follow the mixing instructions on the packaging! If someone tries to tell you that you can water down the formula to help save you money, don't do it! At 6 months old, my nephew was still 12 lbs because of this bad advice (he has gained 3 lbs in the past month after I advised my SIL of the proper mixing instructions). A woman in Florida tried doing this with her baby and her baby died from starvation since they weren't getting the nutrients they needed.

I'm pretty sure the original poster is not going to be doing that; but some babies just don't gain much weight no matter how they are fed and no matter how well instructions are followed; usually an underlying cause is found but sometimes they can't really find one. My youngest son was fed on a comfort formula (thickened, partially hydrolised) until 1 year; at first he did get back up one percentile on the chart but then he didn't really gain weight well after that, until he was well established on solids and on normal cows milk. He had the exact amount of formula for his weight and sometimes more, made to the exact instructions on the box; each day. He didn't have any obvious reaction to the formula and I was advised to use that one because of the history of problems with dairy in my family. I know of other babies on the same formula who gained weight great guns, so it really depends.