What It’s Like To Learn Your Baby Has “Failure To Thrive”

What to Do

Regular Visits

Concerned that my daughter wasn’t gaining weight at the same rate as other babies of her age, our maternal and child health nurse had us come in more regularly for visits to keep a closer eye on her weight and to work on strategies for improving it. Ideally, as your baby’s height and weight is plotted on the chart at each checkup, there should be a continuous upward trend.

Shift to Baby Formula

To begin with, she had me supplement my breast milk with formula while also working on solutions to boost my milk supply. When it became apparent that my supply was the issue and it wasn’t improving despite the many things I was doing to boost it, I changed completely to formula, which helped her grow a little bit – at one point she nearly got over the 5th percentile!

When we introduced solid foods a few months later, my little one took to it enthusiastically. She was (and still is) an extremely good eater, but still stayed down the bottom of the charts, no matter how much food we gave her. She was eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, morning tea and afternoon tea. I was told to add butter and cheese to her veggies for extra calories. It didn’t really make much difference.

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Caroline Duncan

Caroline Duncan is a freelance journalist and photographer with almost 20 years’ media experience in radio, magazines and online. She is also a mother of three daughters, and when she’s not writing or taking pictures, she’s extremely busy operating a taxi service running them around to various activities. She can’t sew and hates housework.

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