2 month old, 9 lbs, is he failure to thrive??

Question

my son was born full term. (2 days late =) ) he weighed 7lbs 11oz. and was 21 in long. Now he is 2 1/2 months old and weighs 9lbs. and is 22in long. I took him to his 2 month "well baby check-up" and the doctor said he is in the 25th% for his hight and almost the 5th% for his weight. he should go for his next check-up in 2 months, but i'm worried because the doc wants him back in 2 weeks. and because she briefly mentioned the chance of "failure to thrive". she said the amount he is eating in a day is good. so i guess my question is, why isn't he growing? if he is "failure to thrive" what does that mean, and what can i do to help??? it all caught me off gaurd at the doctors so i didn't think to ask, and 2 week seems like so long to find out. any info will help!

WOW! thanks for everybody answering so fast! umm... let's see, his father and i are 5'8 and 5'6,med build. he is bottle fed. and eats well. (never even spits up) =) (......and i didn't ask about the FTT thing ant the doc. because i had never heard of it and thought that it was her way of saying he wasent growing fast enough. after i told my mom that the doc said he wasent "thriving" 'she' put 2 and 2 togather. or i WOULD have asked.

***********thanks everyone for all the
great answers. it's too hard for
me to pick the best, so i'm just
gonna put it up to vote.......
thanks again :)

Answer 1

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030901/879.html

http://www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/growth/thrive.html

http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/tp/fthrivetp.htm

I've personally never heard of it. So I typed "failure to thrive+infants" into the Yahoo! search engine. Quite a few websites came back, the ones above are just the top 3. Good Luck!

Answer 2

I am so sorry... you should have been given more information at the doctors... what a scary position you are in. A failure to thrive is when a baby isn't getting the nutrition, or growth it needs. Your baby may be eating enough, but his body may not be able to hold onto the nutritional values of the formula.
If I were you, I'd contact your local social services tomorrow morning and start asking about how to turn this around, they may have some areas of expertise on this matter and be able to give you the hope that you are so desperately in need of right now.
And if 2 weeks is too far away for you to see your doc, get in there everyday until you are satisfied with the outcome.
I sure hope everything turns around for you and your little one, good luck

Answer 3

I hate when doctors use the term failure to thrive. They say FTT when the baby isn't growing according to their height/weight charts. Personally, I think it is silly to expect a baby to grow based on a scale. It is just a label to make you and the doctors aware that there could be a problem. A lot of factors are considered. Is the baby being fed formula or breast milk? My daughter was 7 lbs 6 oz at birth. She was around 9 pounds at 2 months and stayed within the 9 lbs at 3 months. At 4 months, she even lost a little bit of weight. I had to take her to a gastro specialist. It turned out that my milk supply wasn't enough for her to be getting all that she needed. He gave me me some suggestions on what I can do to strength my milk supply (domperidone, fennugreek, etc). I did my best to pump an extra bottle or I gave her a 4 oz bottle of formula each night. We added saflour oil to give her the calories. It is odorless and tasteless. Anyway, it was a relief to find out that the problem was with my and not her. Most doctors offices allow you to bring in the baby for free weight checks. I did that once a week to see whether she was gaining. Some people say that is too much and wait the two weeks or month. Now my daughter is three and she continues to be a healthy little girl. She is in the 55% for height and her weight is 28%. I hope everything works out for you!

Answer 4

I'm sorry! I guess the first question.. do you feed him on demand, or are you trying to keep him on a schedule? Maybe he is hungry and he's not getting enough. Some babies eat every hour, some every 4, some a combination. So make sure you are feeding him whenever he wants it, and not on a schedule...that can come later when he's bigger.

Second....are you breastfeeding? If yes, the above still applies, but have your breastmilk tested for fat content and such. One friend of mine has really really low fat content in her milk, and her baby was literally starving the first two months. But don't give up if that's the case...she just needed to supplement with formula once a day and the baby packed on some weight and is now perfectly happy and18 months old.

Third...don't freak out yet. He may just be little. My daughter was over 8 lbs at birth, but just gained really slow. She didn't hit 12 lbs until she was 5 months old -most kids hit it by 3 months!

Fourth...make sure to keep that follow up appt. with your doc. Its very good that your doc is concerned, but she said "chance" of it, not that he has it. Most pediatrician err on the side of caution. Sure, he may have some illness, but you don't know anything yet. I know it seems impossible to not worry.....but good luck, and I hope he is ok.

Answer 5

Although it's been recognized for more than a century, failure to thrive lacks a precise definition, in part because it describes a condition rather than a specific disease. Children who fail to thrive don't receive or are unable to take in, retain, or utilize the calories needed to gain weight and grow as expected.

Most diagnoses of failure to thrive are made in infants and toddlers - in the first few years of life - a crucial period of physical and mental development. After birth, a child's brain grows as much in the first year as it will grow during the rest of the child's life. Poor nutrition during this period can have permanent negative effects on a child's mental development.
Many normal babies go through brief periods when their weight gain plateaus or they even lose a little weight. However, if a baby doesn't gain weight for 3 consecutive months during the first year of life, doctors usually become concerned.
Failure to thrive can result from a wide variety of underlying causes. So your doc just wants to make sure your baby's health is good & is looking out for any abnormalities.

Answer 6

Well if he is in the 25th for height he is growing! That is a better indicator of growth. Sometimes a baby will weigh less at a well visit if he was sick prior to the appt. Was the scale balanced at the office and did the doc have the nurse recheck her measurements? They do make mistakes. You could call I am sure and request a weight check in a week or so if you are worried. Many offices if you call the receptionist will let you come in and check the weight. If it is still a question in the 2 weeks the best and easiest thing to do is a bone age xray. It is an x-ray of the wrist. It will tell the babys age by bone growth. Good luck!

Answer 7

Try not to worry too much for now. I am sure they gave you instructions on how to watch him the next couple of weeks. Track eating, sleeping, diapering, and activity habits then bring your records to the doctor. This should tell your doctor of any problems. Then they may want to do a bunch of labs, my daughters was done at 18 months because she was still the size of an average 3-6 month old. They did an EKG, bone density, blood mineral count, spinal tap and some others. Everything was fine and she finally started growing but she is still tiny. At 5 she is the size of a 3 year old. She is only supposed to get to 4'11 and 90 pounds as full grown, she never even hit the 5th percentile. But she is smart as can be. She adds, subtracts and is beginning to multiply, knows her letters and phonics. My nephew is the same way. He was 8 pounds 3 ounces and at 2 months was only 10 pounds, they were concerned but by his next checkup was growing nicely. He is still small for his age but within acceptable range.

Here is a site with some info: http://kidshealth.org/parent/nutrition_fit/nutrition/failure_thrive.html

But really try not to stress too much because babies can sense that and that would make it worse. Good luck!

I just wanted to add that if you are formula feeding, try using NeoSure Advance. It is mainly for preemies but it has extra calories which may be helpful. Also make sure you feed on demand and you might even need to wake him up to eat. My twins would not wake to eat but the doctors said they needed more calories so I had to make sure they ate every 3-4 hours even if it meant waking them up. http://rosstore.com/store.cfm?Department=Pediatric&Category=NeoSure+Advance&Subcategory=&OrderID=0

Answer 8

My son was born at 37 weeks and weighed 6lbs 6 oz...and at 2 months weighed 8lbs 2 oz. He was diagnosed with failure to thrive. I was breastfeeding and I unknowingly had a blood infection which was being passed to him in the breastmilk. He was sick because of me! The dr put him on formula-Enfamil AR(since its thicker than most formulas) and by 4 months he weighed 16 pounds. He was also diagnosed with reflux and put on meds for that. He has been a healthy weight ever since. If you think something is wrong, trust your instinct.

If you are nursing, you might try nursing more often, or supplementing with Enfamil AR. The AR stand for Added Rice. Good luck!

Answer 9

ok, the untimely infant replace into born six months in the past? Weighs 9 lbs now? this is rather below a pound in keeping with month income...premies can each and every each and every now and then be sluggish gainers because of the fact they have distinctive catching as much as do and issues like sucking might nicely be annoying for them. the infant ought to truly be considered with the help of a her pediatrician or kinfolk scientific professional to be sure he's nicely and all is fantastic, although. many times an toddler can income as much as two lbs or a splash greater in keeping with month and the 1st 6-8 months are the speedy boost stages. untimely toddlers have a tendency to cry a sturdy deal so he might desire to no longer be crying via starvation yet because of the fact together with his immature apprehensive device he can get chilly, warm, apprehensive, startled etc rather basic and merely approximately each and every thing could make him cry.

Answer 10

the first thing to look at is yourself and the father. are the two of you skinny? short? if you are both rather small in physique then chances are, your son will be small too. my daughter is also very small (she is 18 months old and is 30 inches and barely weighs 20 lbs, not even on the chart for her weight). i have seen a few doctors and also a nutritionist who told me that as long as the height and weight are proportional she is fine. since your son is in the 25th percentile for his height it is not bad that his weight is in the 5th percentile. it is always better to be safe than sorry and that is probably why the doc wants to see him back, just to be sure. but i wouldnt worry too much, some babies are just small.

Answer 11

Is he breastfed, or bottle fed?

If he is bottle fed, I would worry for being that tiny. If he is breastfed, some women in rare cases never get hind milk, which is the fatty milk, and this could be a possible reason for not gaining. A women at my churches son was 1 month old and weighed less then he did at birth. They finally figured this out after 2 months.

Anyways, that seems awfully small to be, but some people are small. My babies were twins and 7.1 and 6.6 and at a month they were over 10 lbs. Formula fed. My son was 8.6 at birth and is breastfed and at a month was over 11 lbs. So it just sounds small..

But I do want to say there are alot of things they can do in a FTT case. Its not as bad as it sounds. Good luck, and email me to let me know how it turns out, I would really be interested in aknowing, and I am praying for your little one!