If you are not watching sodium you add more soy sauce.

Or you can use the lower-sodium soy sauce, which is just as tasty. IMNSHO.

Once, when I went to the student health center with something like my fourth case of tonsillitis that winter, the doctor told me that there was nothing wrong with my throat and that my only problem was that I needed to lose 60 pounds.

Sounds like my ex-shrink, who once, after asking literally nothing about my depression, badgered me until I told her what I weighed, calcluated my BMI, told me how much I needed to lose, and -- my favorite part -- that she would prescribe a weight-loss drug for me.

The hell, you say. That was the last time I ever darkened her door.

If a stone is 14 pounds, that baby weighs 30 pounds. Which is not particularly big for 18 months; I know an exclusively breastfed baby who is 24 pounds at 4 months, and Peter was 27 pounds at his 18 month checkup and dead average (50-60%ile). I mean, seriously? Picky toddlers of normal weight: not news.

Occasionally, I forget how tiny Lillian is. Then I read this, and think, gosh, she was 25lbs at her three year check up. (It's on the charts! Barely! She's also short. Like, 34-35" tall or something. The good part? I got two to two and a half years of wear out of all her cloth diapers, and usually get at least a year out of her clothes, if not more. She still wears the Batman shirt Ginger sent her. It's marked 12 months.)

This is why I miss my OBGYN in LA. I gained 67 lbs with Em, putting me will over the 250 mark. He told me every appointment that I was "perfect and beautiful".

I'm going to make an executive decision here and decree stabbination across the board for: the Brit baby's doctor, with a side of extra stabbination for the author and editor of that obnoxious article; aurelia's nephew's school; Hil's student health center doctor; and the Marie Claire 6-foot-tall woman's doctor.

Also, yeah, what Jess said about breastfed babies. Pediatricians are supposed to have separate growth charts for BF babies, but they very frequently don't. And then you get the happy fun MUST START SUPPLEMENTING NOW pressure. Ugh.

I was just about always at the very bottom of the growth charts as a baby and child. I remember in fourth grade, when I was at the fifth percentile for height and twenty-fifth for weight, my doctor and mother were a bit concerned about my weight, but I was all excited that, for the first time I could remember, I was actually on the chart for height -- before that, I'd been below what was on the charts as the lowest conceivable height for my age. (And I ate an incredibly healthy diet and was skating three times a week and spending hours on my bike each weekend then. My cholesterol at age 9 was also over 200, even though I ate only super-lean meat, almost nothing fried, no egg yolks, and only skim milk. No escaping genetics in terms of cholesterol in my family.)

Plei - I'm right there with you with Em. She was 5th %tile in weight for so long, but Em's pretty tall. She wears a 3t, but mostly cause she needs the length. At her 3 year check up in February she was 38" tall and 31lbs.

So on the one hand, you have healthy (but small) breastfed babies having supplements pushed on them, children who are outside the "normal" range being offered help getting their weight down, some parents starving toddlers because they don't want the kids to be "obese" ... I think what we have is an epidemic of stupidity.

Oh, Aims, I saw a little girl the other day when we were out who looked JUST LIKE Em, except she was probably 5 or 6. Does MM have any cousins in NC?

I know people who bring the WHO baby-growth charts to doctors' appointments. They have a much more inclusive demographic.

Does MM have any cousins in NC?

Not that we know of, but his birth father's family could be out there. That's funny.