Really concerned :(

Hi Everyone
      My almost 18month old son was 9.75kg when he was 7 months old, he got weighed a couple of weeks ago (when he was 17months old) and he weighed 11.80kg, which means he has only gained 2kgs in 10months. I knew he wasn’t gaining weight but didn’t realize it was this bad until the nurse printed out the graph and showed it to me. I don’t expect him to be gaining weight like he was when he was a baby but I thought it would be more than 2 kgs in 10months. He is 83.7cm , so very tall and skinny (all bones).
He is allergic to dairy and have recently found out that he is allergic to soy as well ( I used to give him soy milk and yogurt before). I still breastfeed him twice a day but I don’t think my supply is good. It’s a struggle to get him to eat anything, it takes about 45mins to an hour at every meal time and it’s been like this for about 2 months now. He needs distraction (something to hold onto and play) while I feed him and if he doesn’t have something to play with, then he simply wont eat. Everyone keeps telling me that he will eat when he is hungry but sure enough he is hungry in the morning when his last feed was 12-13 hours ago. I end up all stressed out at his meal times.
He also gets bad eczema (on his back and tummy) on and off and I give him anti-histamine when he is very itchy. He is otherwise a very happy and active toddler.
I guess I just want to know if there is something I need to worry about or am I just worrying about nothing? Any advice would be much appreciated as I am really worried about my son.
Thanks again

And it's pretty normal for a toddler to be fickle with their eating, though my ds has eczema as well & when he's on antihistamines is appetite is slightly less than normal.

I wouldnt worry too much. Ive always had a fussy toddler, she has only just started eating within the last 6 months. Before that i had to try get food into her.

Maybe offer him more finger foods or even let him try feed himself. He might prefer that and start eating more.

My dd was 8kg at 9 months 9kg at 1year and 11kg at 20 months. Now she may have reached 12kg being 2. But i wouldnt worry about his weight gain

Has he started crawling/ moving about in that time between weight checks??

Jae was 9.45kg at her 15 month check, and 3 months later (GP was worried about her height growth rate slwoing down, so requested another check at 18 months) she'd only gone up to 10.05kg, so 600gm in 3 months. BUT she started walking in that time and was moving a LOT more than she was between her 15 month check and the one prior, so the GP wasn't worried at all. Once they start moving, more of their energy intake goes on fueling their 'get up and go' than it does their growth, so its normal to slow down a little.

My plunket nurse said to me that kids go through stages when they grow up and then a stage when they grow out/gain weight. Maybe your son has been growning taller lately and this might slow now and he might go through a stage of gaining weight.

my daughter was weighed at 8 or 9 months and was 8.3 kgs and is now 15months and was weighed yesterday and is only 9.8kgs but 83.5cm tall, so very tall and skinny but she just above average for weight and really really tal lol look at the graph in the wellchild book to see where he is all on the average scale of things

I wouldnt stress to much my DD is 2.5yrs and her weight is 10kg and she is 81cm tall, we have been to peads and plunket as they where concerned and in the end came to the conclusion shes just compact

at ds 12 month check even his head was measured!

I'm sure you don't need more reassurance, but I'll give you some anyway

Hannah, at 6.5 months was 6.63kg.
At 15 months she was 8.48kg.
At 24 months she was 10.22kg
And she is now 11.98kg, at a week off her 3rd birthday.
She eats like a horse, but doesn't stop moving, so her weight gain is hard to come by

I skimmed through other posts, so not sure if it's been said - but toddlers, as you know, are very active - barely stopping long enough to eat.
I've been told that kids that age really don't need to eat a heck of a lot. Just enough to keep them going, really.

He's fine, I'm sure. You know him better than anyone else and you'd know if he wasn't well, or behaving out of character.
Before you know it, he'll be 16 and eating you out of house and home

Nutella wrote: Just out of curiousity and a bit off topic....do plunket nurses get concerned when say the weight % is not the same as the height %? I guess if your child was on the bottom 15% for weight but top 15% for height then that would indicate a problem?? or vice versa with a roundy baby? Is that how it works? I thought it was interesting when the child heath nurse said that they take note of the parents height/frame so they can get an indication of if there is a problem with baby...ie if the baby was super short with tall parents they would check out why...do they do this in nz?

Yes, it's the discrepancy. Cooper is 50 % for height so very average. He was 3rd % for weight which is what concerned them. If he was 3rd & 3rd then I don't think it is an issue. It's the really low weight with normal heights that makes them more concerned. It usually goes along with a loss of the sub-cutaneous fat layer. My DD was also very thin but she was 95% height & 50% weight but there was no issue with her. So I think it's only the really low weights that they get concerned about.