12 week old is huge

knottie6d8fcadcb995a6a0

My 12 week old baby girl is overweight (at least by the calculators and was in the 98th percentile at her 2 month check-up). She is exclusively bf (I do struggle with oversupply). It is very stressful because I am worried that I am overfeeding her (although, I try everything- pacifier, rocking, holding, burping) before I feed her. I feel like I am fattening her up like a suckling pig and setting her up for a lifetime of obesity. My husband/everyone else (the pediatrician) tell me not to worry, but I can't stop. Anybody else in the same situation or have some comforting thoughts? Or maybe a story about how a really heavy baby thinned out?

Knottie31375502

You are doing great!!! Don’t worry about the baby, she will lose the weight as she start to be more active with crawling/ walking. You can lengthen the timing. Let her sleep, don’t wake her for nursing. During the day she can be distracted with the play gym/toys and nurse her every 4 hours. Don’t worry she will be fine for that long. 

Also, you can’t really overfeed a breastfed baby. When she’s full she will pull away and when she’s not hungry she will push the breast away. 

The key right now if you’re worried about over feeding- let her sleep and space her feeding out to 4 hours when awake. She can do it ☺️☺️

knottieaf82d51675dfd477

I’m in a similar boat. My daughter is 7 weeks old, and she is 15lbs. No one can get over her sheer size. she has three chins at all times, and rolls on tools. She looks like the marshmallow man. It is absolutely adorable now. But I do admit I also worry she’s always going to be a big girl. My oldest daughter was not like this as a baby; meaning her appetite and size were much smaller. She took after me.

My seven week old, however, is a spitting image of her father and apparently developed his love for food too. I’ve now been exclusively pumping and feeding her my breast milk from a bottle so I could find out just how much she eats in one sitting. Which turns out to be anywhere from 8-12 ounces every four hours. But if she’s hungry she’s hungry. I always let her tell me when she wants to eat. I never wake her to feed. She has a great set of lungs when she requires food, and I’m not going to deny her. She slows down or pulls away from the bottle when she is full. I do not worry I am over feeding. I listen to her cues. I try to be positive and consider that even though the poor girl is built like my husband she’s a very healthy baby. Hopefully she has a growth spurt when she’s older and becomes longer instead of wider.

emilyb153

I have had 3 large babies. They were big for gestational age. My 2nd was 8 lb 10 oz and came 3 weeks early!  They were 99..98..97 percentile for height and weight.. my latest 4 week old is 97 percentile for weight and off the chart for height. All were or are breastfed. My two girls averaged out over time. Both thinned out as we phased out of nursing and started solids and walking, and I introduced healthy foods early. One is 4 and one is 3, and both are healthy and not at all overweight.

All kids are different, but follow your baby. If you are eating healthy foods, I think you’ll be fine. My babies always spit up excess milk if they ate too much, so I never worried about over feeding. You can’t control genetics, but  My advice is to start healthy habits early, and you’ll be giving her all she needs. Best of luck!