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That does seem low with a slow gain. I have small little ones but they had much lower birth weights, stayed smalled, never dropped curves and had a more proportional height to weight.

At one points we were doing weight checks with my son and my doctor was going to check his thyroid and for celiacs. If she doesn’t gain the weight I would pursue the testing for peace of mind.

Have you tried upping the ounces of bottles? What about offering food? I think the most recent guidelines say you can start food between 4-6 months

@Dr. Pepper: I wouldn’t do it in a bottle, i would mix rice cereal with breast milk or formula and offer it on a spoon

You can also mash up avocado with formula or breast milk so it’s more runny and offer that as well - high calorie/fat.

One more idea is to mix her bottles with less water so they’re more caloric - I think it’s like 3 scoops to 5oz water or add a tsp of formula to 3oz breastmklk

@Dr. Pepper: we just used Gerber and never had any issues. they have regular and organic. i think earth's best has an organic one I saw at target. I didn't look into it a ton because I feel like there's all kinds of negativity about rice cereal on the internet! The hospital gave us Gerber so I figured we would just stick with what was familiar.

When we put it in the bottle I'm pretty sure we did a tbsp for 2 oz of formula. He needed it pretty thick.

Just FYI the breastmilk will break it down some so mix it right before you want to feed her.

I might start by mixing an ounce with maybe a 1/2 tbsp of cereal and then play with it if you want it thinner or thicker. You could try it on the spoon first and see if she takes to it and then you could avoid having to do it in the bottle. We used those take and toss infant spoons that are really small and shallow .

@Dr. Pepper: Yes, exactly. Her later breakthrough kidney infections did involve very high fevers, but initially she was a super happy baby meeting her milestones, just not gaining. Her reflux was grade 5+ on both sides, which is why they did the surgery so early. She was on daily, prophylactic antibiotics from the day it was diagnosed until 6 weeks post surgery, and hasn't been on them since. Surgery changed everything about her.

@Dr. Pepper: i hope you figure out a solution that everyone can be happy with, especially baby!

I hope that you find something that works and she starts gaining more.

FWIW DS1 we started feeding cereal at 4 months and he loved it. DS2 was closer to 5 months before he would eat anything. You can still move over to BLW even if you do cereal now, I did with DS1.

at that age, I'd rather fortify bottles with formula, and do rice cereal separately.

I don't know a ton about fortification but as LO's weight fell from 20th-3rd percentile, I did add like a 1/2 scoop of formula to her bottles. There's charts you can find online, ask your dr.

@Dr. Pepper: you can ask your doc, but we did oatmeal not long after rice cereal.

I started my son on purees and soft table foods at 4 months because he just couldn't get enough to eat. I don't know how yours would take to it side she's so resistant to extra feeds, but my son did better with the pouches than the purees in a jar. We used a few brands, but settled on Happy Baby organic, and used them all the way through to the Happy Tot line.

@Dr. Pepper: that is tough. Hopefully you can get some extra calories into her.

Our son dropped off the charts at 4 months too. If you look at my past posts I have a couple threads on it. He wound up being labeled as failure to thrive and they did a bunch of tests but nothing was ever wrong.

We wound up fortifying breast milk with formula and the drs recommended starting baby food. We also cut back on nursing in order to fortify and measure how much he ate, which looking back I really regret.

Now he’s 2.5 years and just fine, but tiny. He’s still really picky with food and only eats what he wants too. Nothing wrong though, just tiny.

Which chart are they going by? CDC or WHO? Because she’s receiving breast milk and is breastfed, they should be using the WHO charts. The CDC chart will make them super low!! My daughter is 3% on WHO but <0.01% on the CDC chart. For reference, she was 15lbs at a year (6lbs 7oz at birth). She’s just turning 4 and I think she is about 27lbs now.

@Dr. Pepper: My daughter has dropped from the 89%ile to the 5th over 9 months and we have been weighing her daily/several times a week for the past two months. If she's eaten overnight/recently, her weight is definitely up a good 3-4 ounces, and if it's been more than a day since she last pooped, she's also usually up a good 3-5 ounces. So we know she's definitely getting enough in when she's eating, but she just isn't gaining a lot of weight.

It was recommended to us that we try supplementing her solids with some kind of oil. She rejected olive and coconut oil but tolerates MCT oil and so we've been adding a squirt of that to her oatmeal + applesauce combos. We just started adding formula to breastmilk as well to see if that helps. Right now they are sort of waiting and seeing to determine if she's just small or if she is going to fall off the charts eventually.