failure to thrive

I am just genuinely curious for those momma's whose children have failure to thrive. what's the difference between that and just an extremely small child? is it a lack of meeting milestones? I hear about failure to thrive occasionally on here and am always curious about it because my daughter is super tiny but also totally healthy and her dr. has never expressed concern in her weight (i'm not worried either, but just curious in the difference)

<blockquote><b>Quoting Tasha Norman:</b>" I am just genuinely curious for those momma's whose children have failure to thrive. what's the difference ... [snip!] ... healthy and her dr. has never expressed concern in her weight (i'm not worried either, but just curious in the difference)"</blockquote>




I think hen it's when they arent consistently gaining height or weight.

Small kids still follow a growth curve though. They might gain slow but they are consistent in their growing and gaining. FTT babies will just simply not grow or gain or significantly drop off their curve (say going from 70% percentile to 10%) It can cause them to also have delays meeting developmental milestones.

If they're not gaining weight/growing like they should its failure to thrive. I ended up in the hospital when ds was a week old & he ended up losing almost a lb so his dr put him on high calorie formula

Quoting Jennybananna:" Small kids still follow a growth curve though. They might gain slow but they are consistent in their ... [snip!] ... off their curve (say going from 70% percentile to 10%) It can cause them to also have delays meeting developmental milestones."

hmm interesting. my daughter fell from like the 65% percentile when born to the 35th at around 4-6 months of age and then fell to under the 1st percentile but now she does consistently gain weight although she's still under the 1st percentile. does it take some months for the growth curve pattern to be established?

hopefully my dr. wasn't an idiot lol because she was a super pissed off little baby all the time and threw up constantly and he said not to worry about it....but I guess she turned out ok now so it's all good  

Quoting Tasha Norman:" hmm interesting. my daughter fell from like the 65% percentile when born to the 35th at around 4-6 months ... [snip!] ... weight although she's still under the 1st percentile. does it take some months for the growth curve pattern to be established?"

Im not 100% on that. I know they can drop some once they become mobile (crawling, walking, ect) I think there are a lot of factors that go into a doctor saying a baby is FTT. I just know what I have read about online. Although my pedi did say anything more than a 20% drop or increases is cause for a concern to her.

How old is she and how much does she weigh?

Quoting SpaceCowgirl:" How old is she and how much does she weigh?"

at 25 months she weighed 21 lbs. she's perfectly healthy now and right on track on her milestones and loves eating now and such. But when she was younger I had a lot of concerns because of her lack of weight gain and she wasn't meeting some milestones (she couldn't hold her head up until she was like 4 months old) and was spitting up massively all the time, but her dr. didn't worry. I guess retrospectively I maybe should have gotten a second opinion, but she is a super happy and healthy girl now.

Yeah, if she's consistently gaining weight, I'd say she's ok.

My son is in the 0 percentile, so they are starting to do blood work to figure out what's going on. My doctor told me that if they stay on the same growth curve, then they're fine, but my son was 50 percentile at 4 months and now he's down to zero, so they're worried.

My LO is in the 1 percentile, for weight, but she is 'on time' with all her other milestones, so her nutrisionist is seeing her once a month, and figuring out ways to help her gain. She is 9mos weighing 13.8lbs 2wks ago.