questions about development - when do you worry?

My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily is still on ebm, but will have to make
the switch to formula as our supply will be running out in a matter of days.
All has seemed well, although she seems so small! Just the other day, a
friend of ours brought their 6 wk old over and he is 12 lbs. He started out
the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14 lbs... They look
the same age side by side. Emily has not shown any interest in rolling,
crawling, etc. She HATES being on her tummy, so I don't leave her in that
position very long. She can sit if she is supported in her boppy, but today
she fell out of the boppy and on to the floor from the couch while my
daughter was watching her. I felt awful. I yelled at my older daughter
while I tried to get Emily to stop crying. Emily loves to eat. She drinks
plenty, and she loves to eat Gerber babyfood and anything that I mash up at
home and feed her. She likes to stand with our help, reaches for objects,
etc. She sleeps through the night almost every night. She seems happy, and
the ped says she is taking after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my husband
about 5'7".

Still, I am starting to get concerned...

Can anyone ease my fears or make a reccomendation?

Thanks
Betsy

Sounds normal to me. I can remember my first not rolling or sitting up at 7
months. If she seems happy then more than likely all is well.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

"oregonchick" wrote in message
...
My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily is still on ebm, but will have to
make
the switch to formula as our supply will be running out in a matter of
days.
All has seemed well, although she seems so small! Just the other day, a
friend of ours brought their 6 wk old over and he is 12 lbs. He started
out
the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14 lbs... They
look
the same age side by side. Emily has not shown any interest in rolling,
crawling, etc. She HATES being on her tummy, so I don't leave her in that
position very long. She can sit if she is supported in her boppy, but
today
she fell out of the boppy and on to the floor from the couch while my
daughter was watching her. I felt awful. I yelled at my older daughter
while I tried to get Emily to stop crying. Emily loves to eat. She
drinks
plenty, and she loves to eat Gerber babyfood and anything that I mash up
at
home and feed her. She likes to stand with our help, reaches for objects,
etc. She sleeps through the night almost every night. She seems happy,
and
the ped says she is taking after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my
husband
about 5'7".

Still, I am starting to get concerned...

Can anyone ease my fears or make a reccomendation?

Thanks
Betsy

oregonchick wrote:
My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily [...] is only 14 lbs...

Monkey Boy didn't reach 20 pounds until he was about 19 months. He is
bouncing around between 12th and 25th percentiles for height but tends
to run far below the growth charts for weight. When "plump", he runs
as high as 5th percentile. Some infants are just slim. That's okay.
You know it is okay if their growth is steady and they are otherwise
well.


She can sit if she is supported in her boppy

Maybe it is time to take her out of the boppy and let her learn how to
sit and move for herself? On the floor. Helping her sit is sure to
delay her learning to sit.


the ped says she is taking after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my husband
about 5'7".

The ped is talking nonsense. Infant weight has not much to do with
final adult heigh. Final adult height depends in large part on
nutritional status throughout childhood and at what age the person
stops growing taller.

Bottom line: I read nothing in your post to worry about.

Are you charting her growth? That might help to reassure you, now and
in the future. You can download good clear PDFs of the standard charts
from cdc.gov. If you do chart, be sure to chart height for age, not
just weight for age.

Alli has been slow on every single gross motor milestone. Rolling over,
sitting unsupported, creeping, crawling, cruising, walking. She finally
started crawling at 12 months, and started walking at 18. And I've been
nervous almost non-stop since, oh, 6 months or so, when she started falling
farther and farther behind the "your baby week by week" lists. She's still
about 6 months behind on the toddler development charts.

However, according to my pediatrician, those are pegged to about the
25%-there are a sizeable number of children who won't match the list and are
still perfectly normal. If she's making progress, her muscle tone is good,
and she doesn't have neurological soft signs, she's probably just a slow
developer in that area. I've gotten sick of hearing "wait and see"-but I
guess that's how it works at this age.

Alli seems to learn by watching. She does a lot of things first only after
observing other children doing them-but then, when she does, she gets it all
at once. So, she didn't walk until 18 months, but really didn't cruise much,
either. She went from pulling up, to a small amount of cruising, to walking
very quickly. It's almost like her daddy's views on electronics "Let's let
someone else work out the bugs first".

And, she may be a child who is simply working on a different schedule.
Alli's at least 6 months behind on the physical, and right now is somewhere
over 6 months ahead on language-a gap which keeps increasing. I guess she
decided it was more useful to be able to tell people what you need than to
go and get things yourself. Her pediatrician has been saying all along that
eventually she'll slow down in the language area and speed up in the
physical, and that as long as she's continuing to develop we're not going to
worry.

Do share your concerns with your ped, but probably she's simply at the slow
end of a development curve, he's at a faster one, and they're both
completely normal.

--
Donna DeVore Metler
Orff Music Specialist/Kindermusik
Mother to Angel Brian Anthony 1/1/2002, 22 weeks, severe PE/HELLP
And Allison Joy, 11/25/04 (35 weeks, PIH, Pre-term labor)

oregonchick wrote:
snip about the 12 lb 6 week old
He started out
the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14 lbs... They look
the same age side by side. Emily has not shown any interest in rolling,
crawling, etc. She HATES being on her tummy, so I don't leave her in that
position very long. She can sit if she is supported in her boppy,

Ditto, Ditto, Ditto, Ditto, Ditto. So Emily has good company. Maybe it
has to do with the names - both begin with E !! :-P

Emily loves to eat. She drinks
plenty, and she loves to eat Gerber babyfood and anything that I mash up at
home and feed her.

E hates to eat - compounding the problem.

She likes to stand with our help, reaches for objects,

Ditto

etc. She sleeps through the night almost every night.

E wakes twice a night on average.

She seems happy, and
the ped says she is taking after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my husband
about 5'7".


Ditto for the Ped comment.

Still, I am starting to get concerned...

Can anyone ease my fears or make a reccomendation?

Hopefully I have. And you've considerably eased mine !! :-)
Really, she's fine. My Ped explained that rolling over / crawling,
while an important milestone, isn't *the* milestone. As long as the
child is moving about (and this includes moving in any direction facing
up or on their tummy, in any way), and are showing interest in their
surroundings (which she seems to be doing), they are fine.

Other than that, I can sympathize. The worrying gets to me too
sometimes. Hang in there.

PK

"oregonchick" wrote in message
...
My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily is still on ebm, but will have to
make
the switch to formula as our supply will be running out in a matter of
days.
All has seemed well, although she seems so small! Just the other day, a
friend of ours brought their 6 wk old over and he is 12 lbs. He started
out
the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14 lbs... They
look
the same age side by side. Emily has not shown any interest in rolling,
crawling, etc. She HATES being on her tummy, so I don't leave her in that
position very long. She can sit if she is supported in her boppy, but
today
she fell out of the boppy and on to the floor from the couch while my
daughter was watching her. I felt awful. I yelled at my older daughter
while I tried to get Emily to stop crying. Emily loves to eat. She
drinks
plenty, and she loves to eat Gerber babyfood and anything that I mash up
at
home and feed her. She likes to stand with our help, reaches for objects,
etc. She sleeps through the night almost every night. She seems happy,
and
the ped says she is taking after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my
husband
about 5'7".

Still, I am starting to get concerned...

Can anyone ease my fears or make a reccomendation?

She sounds completely normal.
FWIW, my DD (now almost 4yo) followed the 10th percentile for weight and
80th for height until she was about 18 mo. A clinic nurse gave me grief
about it once ... so I stopped seeing her. By contrast my DS (now almost 2
yo) started out up near the top of the scale for weight and height and while
his height often goes off the top of the scale, his weight has crept down
the %s ... but he's still healthy and happy. Now, at almost 4 and 2 yo,
their weights are only 2kg appart!
Also - was the 6 week old on formula- bf babies can tend to weigh less on
average than their ff counterparts, boys can tend to gain weight more
quickly than girls.... and his genes are completely different .... not much
point in comparing.

As for milestones - don't forget that there is an age *range* of a few
months for these things. It also sounds like she has an older "helper" to
bring her things and entertain her so I think some second (3rd 4th etc)
babies are really content to sit back and chill, while others are just
trying to catch up with their older siblings.

If the paed is happy, that's good too.
I vote that she's prolly just fine and right where she should be for weight
and milestones.
If you are still concerned maybe write down what she *can* do today (plus
weight, height etc) and see how that changes over the next month or so.
Amanda

Emily has not shown any interest in rolling,
crawling, etc.


Some babies do things in spurts, At 7 1/2 months my youngest was not
sitting on her own. By 8 months she was sitting on her own, getting
herself back and forth from sitting to tummy and crawling. She is on
the small side too. At 19 months she weighs 20 lbs, the same as her
big sister did at 6 months. She is a good eater and a good nurser too.

--Betsy (not from Oregon)

"oregonchick" wrote in message
...
My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily is still on ebm, but will have to
make the switch to formula as our supply will be running out in a matter
of days. All has seemed well, although she seems so small! Just the other
day, a friend of ours brought their 6 wk old over and he is 12 lbs. He
started out the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14
lbs...

Sproglette's about 23 pounds at two years, wasn't crawling until about eight
or nine months, I want to say. Maybe later. Yeah, later. Closer to her first
birthday, she was walking about thirteen months.

She's had really good receptive abilities, expressive is just now at two
years really picking up. I swear to Holy that she went from single words to
sentences in about a week.

Jess

I think you have nothing to worry about.
Well, honestly, sometimes I'm worried about my toddler too.
He's 14 months old and weighs only about 15 lbs (far below 5th
percentile, right?).
But he's very active. Always walking or running around the house and
the yard.
Eats a lot, though he doesn't drink milk much (only about 400 ml a day
+ breast milk).
His developmental stage is good, I think.

If your ped says it's OK, then hopefully Emily is OK.
Every child has a different developmental stage.

Kisses to Emily,
- aurora -
http://aurora.insparenting.com

"oregonchick" wrote in message
...
My nearly 7 month old daughter Emily is still on ebm, but will have to
make the switch to formula as our supply will be running out in a matter
of days. All has seemed well, although she seems so small! Just the other
day, a friend of ours brought their 6 wk old over and he is 12 lbs. He
started out the same weight as Emily, about 7.5 lbs. Emily is only 14
lbs... They look the same age side by side. Emily has not shown any
interest in rolling, crawling, etc. She HATES being on her tummy, so I
don't leave her in that position very long. She can sit if she is
supported in her boppy, but today she fell out of the boppy and on to the
floor from the couch while my daughter was watching her. I felt awful. I
yelled at my older daughter while I tried to get Emily to stop crying.
Emily loves to eat. She drinks plenty, and she loves to eat Gerber
babyfood and anything that I mash up at home and feed her. She likes to
stand with our help, reaches for objects, etc. She sleeps through the
night almost every night. She seems happy, and the ped says she is taking
after her small parents - I'm 5'2" and my husband about 5'7".

so, sorry, I don't read anything to be worried about, can the 6 week old sit
if supported by a boppy? can he stand with help? does he reach out for
things? NO, you have a normal but slightly small 7 month old, they have a
rather chunky 6 week old. Now, about the weights, Emily is small, there is
little doubt about that, but then as you include your own measurements it's
hardly surprising, as for the little boy, some children gain exceedingly
fast in the first 6 weeks, often 2nd children, when mum has a ridiculous
milk supply, they usually level off in the end, my little girl (2nd child)
weighed only a couple of ounces short of 12 pounds at 6 weeks, birth weight
a little higher, 8lb8oz, but still a similarly exessive gain! She has now
levelled out to a much more expected weight for her age and genetics.

Anne