I Wish I Had a Chubby Baby

I get very frustrated with the constant baby weight comments. No, I am not talking about the baby weight I have to lose, as I've got a lot of work to do still to feel more energetic and be at a healthy body weight. I'm talking about comments directed towards our sweet little babies themselves.

Our Sweet Girl, rolls and all

I've become very aware of the comments made from mom to mom and from strangers to new moms. People used to tell me that Stella was a chubby baby and look at all of those rolls. I took those comments really hard. Probably because weight is an ongoing thing I work on so I took it as a criticism. It may or not been intended that way - I don't know.

I have often felt there was competition between moms with baby weight. If one baby is bigger than another, I would either feel like there was something wrong or be self conscious that my baby might be overweight as an adult. Birth weight and baby weight is often times not an indicator of future weight as an adult.

Stella had the most beautiful little figure

What's the big deal about our babies weight? Do we need to talk about weight so much??

As mothers, we are the people who make our babies. Our bodies nurture the unborn baby and if they come out bigger, does that mean we did something wrong? Or if you gain 60 pounds, as I did with my first pregnancy, does that mean we will have a fat baby? We put so much stress on ourselves and others over weight. 

After the babies are born, weight becomes even more stressful as we try to navigate the task feeding our babies. Breastfeeding doesn't always come easy and we stress about making it work. We stress about giving our babies formula. Others judge us for not breastfeeding. We stress if we overfeed our babies. It all comes back around to baby weight.

I hope I can bring my children up to eat healthy and not stress about weight. Let's let our babies be babies; big or small, chubby or thin. Being healthy is all that matters! I know that now more than ever.

My twins waiting for their weekly weigh ins

We tend to have long bodied babies who range from average size to above-average height. It wasn't until I had my twins that I experienced something very different. A tiny baby who has trouble gaining weight.

I think back to the days were I felt upset about the chubby baby comments because now I would only wish to have a chubby baby.

Walker struggles to gain weight and is four pounds smaller than his identical twin brother due to reflux. He doesn't just spit up, he has massive regurgitation at EVERY SINGLE FEED.

Walker regained his birth weight before Conrad did but has since struggled to get past 10 pounds. Here he is at 3 weeks old.

Since his diagnosis we've had quite the journey and weight gain has become extremely difficult. He is so small that he isn't on the growth charts. It's very stressful because I worry about him getting sick as he does not have much weight to sustain any additional weight loss. He will be admitted to the hospital soon to get a nasal gastric tube to help. I never worried about feeding my babies before now.

Walker with his nasal gastric tube prior to leaving the hospital

I now am on the other side of the coin. Stressing and worrying about a too thin and small baby. It's not easy being a mom, but we do our best for our kids and we shouldn't worry what others may think as long as your doctor isn't concerned. Sometimes we have to make decisions in their best interest, whether it be switching from breastfeeding to bottle feeding or in our case tube feeding, among other decisions. No one will remember how they were fed, how chubby or how thin they were as a baby when they are older and busy, healthy children!