Article: She ain't heavy ; If you're told your baby is underweight, don't assume they're undernourished - it could be the growth charts that are wrong, says Rebecca Hardy

When a baby is born, everyone wants to know its weight. But my baby's size, or lack of it, was an issue for six months. She wasn't putting on enough weight, health visitors said. Other babies' growth charts climbed steadily, but not Alice's. In some weeks she put on just a few ounces, in others her weight leapt up.

For Alice and me, this hardly seemed a problem. I enjoyed breast- feeding and was blissfully happy. But the weighing clinic and those fortnightly interrogations did grind me down. Was I eating enough? Was baby latched on? A health visitor suggested I give formula milk: "You want to see she's thriving," she said. Alice was tested for a urine infection (nothing).

Then we had an ...

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