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.

Yes. Doctors (not all, but enough and more than should be) will diagnose happy healthy babies as "failure to thrive" if their weight falls too far off the standard growth charts.

Point taken. However, would it be a news item with nutritionists, doctors, etc., weighing in on the mother's failure as a mother?

But, yeah, charts are more or less BS no matter where you're coming from.

Annabel was 60th %tile for both weight and height at her 4-year-old check-up. Which makes sense for the child of a 5'7" mother and a 6'0" father--odds are she'll be medium-tall. To me she looks incredibly long and lean, but I think that's just a "Where did my baby go and who is this CHILD?" reaction. We've never had any issues from the pede about her height and weight, but, then again, I never had much of a milk supply, so she was formula-supplemented from one week and formula-fed from two months. Not how I wanted it to work out, but you can only do what you can, you know?

so happy mac has an international dr. who does not look askance at his skinny skinny limbs. And the US charts for % are so f'd up fo rhis school - about half the kids are from Mexico or S. Amer with short parents and the other half are a mix of Asain and Middle Eastern. The Turkish kid and the Tibetian kid not same body type.