Stop Crying Over Baby Weight

Dear Jess from six months ago,

I see you. You're standing barefoot in the master bathroom at 3 AM. You're completely naked, holding a screaming, naked infant. You step on the cold digital scale, squinting in the dark to read the glowing numbers. Then you hand the baby to your very confused husband, step on the scale again, and try to do decimal subtraction in your head while crying over two missing ounces. If I could send a voice memo back in time through the space-time continuum, it would just be me yelling at you to put on some sweatpants and throw that stupid scale out the window.

I've got three kids under five now, and you'd think I'd be immune to the anxiety by this point. But bless my heart, every time we bring a newborn home to our little spot here in rural Texas, I lose my absolute mind over their size. Between chasing a wild toddler, stopping the middle child from eating dry dog food, and trying to print shipping labels for my Etsy shop, my brain just hyper-fixates on ounces like it's a competitive sport. I'm just gonna be real with you—the stress is eating you alive, and it's completely unnecessary.

The math that made me cry

Mama and Grandma always told me that a chunky infant is a healthy infant, and if your kid didn't have leg rolls that looked like a pack of Hawaiian sweet rolls, you were doing something wrong. So when my oldest—who's my cautionary tale for literally every parenting mistake I've ever made—was born, I expected him to be this massive butterball. Instead, he came out looking like a tiny, wrinkled old man. I spent the first four weeks of his life treating him like a high-school wrestler trying to make weight.

I think my pediatrician mentioned at the hospital that newborns normally drop around seven to ten percent of their mass in those first few days? He mumbled something about them just shedding excess fluids from the womb and how it's completely natural. But knowing that fact logically did absolutely nothing to stop my emotional meltdown when the nurse told me he was down half a pound. I demanded answers. I demanded extra lactation appointments. I thought I was breaking him.

From what I gather, a typical full-term kid comes into the world anywhere between five and a half and almost nine pounds, which is a ridiculously huge range if you ask me. My middle kid was barely six pounds, and my youngest was pushing eight. They all bounced back to their original size by about the two-week mark, but those first fourteen days were just me staring at their tiny bodies wondering if my breastmilk was defective.

I absolutely loathe the tracker apps

I need you to delete that percentile calculator app on your phone right now.

Seriously, it's the devil's work. You plug in an unverified, shaky number from your kitchen food scale, hit enter, and suddenly the screen glows red to tell you your kid is in the 8th percentile. Then you spend the next three hours sitting in the rocking chair, crying in the dark, googling if you're ruining your child's life and if they'll ever be tall enough to ride a roller coaster.

Those digital trackers don't know your baby. They don't know that my husband is built like a beanpole and I'm hardly towering over anyone, so of course our kids are going to be on the smaller side. They just feed your midnight anxiety and make you feel like you're failing a test you didn't even know you registered for.

Honestly, as long as you're seeing six to eight heavy, wet diapers a day, you can probably just ignore the apps entirely.

What my doctor actually said about the curve

My pediatrician, bless his incredibly patient soul, finally had to sit me down during our two-month checkup. I brought in a crumpled piece of notebook paper with every feed timed and measured. He gently pushed my paper aside and told me that the whole point of a growth curve chart is to look for a general trend, not to assign a grade. He said it doesn't matter if my baby is in the 15th bracket or the 85th bracket, as long as they're generally following their own personal path.

He told me they usually gain something like an ounce a day in that first month, and they roughly double their starting size by four to six months. But he also warned me that it's not a straight, perfect line. Sometimes they stall out for a week, and then they literally grow out of their footie pajamas overnight. I swear I've put my youngest to bed in a onesie that fit fine, and by morning the snaps were bursting open like the Incredible Hulk.

Let's talk about the sweating and the floor workouts

One thing nobody tells you is how much physical work goes into keeping them healthy. When they're awake, you've to get them on the floor to move around. With my oldest, I hated tummy time. He would scream, I'd cry, and I'd pick him up after thirty seconds. And guess who was super late to crawl because he had the core strength of cooked spaghetti? So with the new baby, we're religious about floor time.

I just clear the living room rug and spread out the Polar Bear Organic Cotton Blanket. I genuinely love this blanket for floor workouts. It's massive, it's double-layered so it's cushy on the hard floor, and the organic cotton is soft enough that I don't cringe when he inevitably face-plants into it. Plus, the little blue bear print gives him something high-contrast to stare at while he's busy complaining about doing infant pushups. It washes perfectly, which is great because he spits up on it at least twice a day.

If you're realizing your baby gear is mostly cheap synthetic junk that falls apart after one wash, you might want to browse Kianao's organic collections for stuff that actually holds up to the mess.

Now, for naps, you've been stressing over how insanely sweaty he gets, and how the heat makes him wake up crabby and hungry when he shouldn't be. Listen, the Bamboo Baby Blanket with Colorful Leaves is what we use now. I'm going to be totally transparent with y'all—the watercolor leaf pattern isn't really my personal vibe, because I'm much more of a muted, solid-colors kind of girl. But I don't even care about the pattern anymore because this bamboo fabric is some kind of absolute wizardry. It naturally controls his temperature so he doesn't wake up drenched in sweat like a tiny overheated radiator. When you're running on two hours of sleep and surviving on lukewarm coffee, any blanket that solves the sweating problem and buys you an extra forty-five minutes of nap time easily earns its keep in my house.

Teething stalls and gnawing on everything

Around month four or five, his eating is going to slow down drastically and you're going to panic and buy another scale. Don't do it. He's just teething, y'all. His little mouth hurts.

When their gums are swelling up, the last thing they want is a warm bottle nipple aggravating it. He's going to go on a nursing strike and instead try to chew on your collarbone, your car keys, the remote control, and the dog's tail. We finally ordered the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy and it practically saved my sanity. It's incredibly cute, and it has all these little raised textures that seem to hit the exact spot in the back of his mouth that's bothering him. Best of all, I can just chuck it in the dishwasher when it gets covered in that gross, sticky floor lint. I actually bought a second one to keep permanently in the diaper bag because heaven forbid we leave the house without it.

If he gets bored of the panda, we swap it out for the Squirrel Teether. The ring shape on that one is super easy for his chubby little fists to grab, and the silicone is just soft enough to give his gums a break. It definitely distracts him from the pain long enough for me to sneak a bottle into his mouth.

Stop shoving a bottle in their mouth for every squeak

The last big lesson my pediatrician gave me was about learning the difference between hunger cues and comfort cues. When I had my first baby, my immediate reaction to any noise he made was to feed him. Squawk? Here's the breast. Whimper? Here's a bottle. Groan? Have some milk.

My doctor gently explained that sometimes they're just bored, or overstimulated, or furious that their left sock fell off again. If you feed them every single time they make a peep, they never learn how to recognize their own body's fullness signals. It overrides their natural instincts. He said you've to let them dictate when they're done, even if there's still an ounce left in the bottle, and trust that they know their own bodies better than you do.

So take a deep breath, delete that cursed app, put the bathroom scale away, and just trust that your baby is growing exactly the way they're supposed to. So pour yourself another cup of coffee and check out Kianao's shop for soothing essentials that seriously make your chaotic days a little bit easier.

Questions I frantically googled at 4 AM

What's a normal amount for them to lose after they're born?

From my understanding and the lecture my doctor gave me while I cried in his office, it's totally normal for them to drop like seven to ten percent in the first few days. They're basically just peeing out all the extra fluid they were floating in. As long as they bounce back around week two, my doctor said I needed to chill out.

How fast do they really gain ounces?

I think the medical books say something about an ounce a day for the first month, but honestly, it feels completely random. My kids would stall for a week and then suddenly gain a pound over a long weekend. It's never a perfectly straight line, no matter what your mother-in-law tells you.

Why does my kid scream bloody murder during tummy time?

Because it's hard work! Imagine someone putting you on your stomach and making you do planks when your head weighs as much as a bowling ball. They hate it, but it builds the muscle they need to crawl. Just throw down a soft blanket, get on the floor with them, and keep it short until they get stronger.

Are the growth tracker apps really that bad?

Yeah, they're toxic little anxiety machines. Unless your doctor specifically tells you to track every single gram for a medical reason, those apps will just make you feel inadequate. They compare your unique, amazing kid to a generic statistical average that doesn't account for genetics.

When should I really call the doctor about their size?

My rule of thumb now is to look at the diapers, not the scale. If we aren't getting those six to eight wet diapers a day, or if they seem completely lethargic and won't wake up to eat at all, then I call the pediatrician. Otherwise, I try to trust the process.