with my 2 oldest daughters. My oldest was very thin - had been from birth - and very small boned. Her head was pretty big though, which wasn't surprising given her dad had a ginormous cranium. The ped FREAKED out on me. Her weight was below the 25th, as was her height, but her head was in the 90th percentile. He was convinced she was starving to death (she was exclusively breastfed at the time, at 6 months old). I explained her output (pee and poop) was totally normal, she was just super active (once she figured out the army crawl...look out!!) He still insisted I supplement with formula and give 3 meals of solids. I didn't, BTW. My daughter dropped further on the growth chart - to just 5th percentile by the time she was 3 years old. Yet, she was extremely healthy. By then I had a new doctor that didn't blink, because she was so healthy otherwise, and her height was still 25th percentile. My (now ex) husband had been a super skinny kid, so I wasn't worried.
However, with my second daughter, we had the opposite problem! She was well over the 100th percentile by the time she was 6 months old (also exclusively breastfed). By the time she was 3 years old, she was in size 6X clothes. I had comments from doctors that I needed to watch her fat intake and make sure she was more active, and so on.
To this day, my oldest daughter is thin - she's a size 2, maybe 4. She has very small bones and is, what I would call, 'weak' meaning she has to work to get muscle tone. She is a couch potato and eats tons of junk food now that she's a teen and has a job of her own. Just tonight, she brought home cookies and a tub of frosting. Yet she's insanely healthy. We get sick for a week, she's over it in 2 days. She does walk to work a couple times a week (and to school during the school year) so she gets a small amount of exercise.
My second daughter is still big. She's very athletic, very muscular, super strong (she's who I get to help me move furniture, LOL), is always on the go, and enjoys going for walks and bike rides. She's in multiple sports. She walks to school. She's the pickiest eater ever. She rarely snacks and is trying to eat healthier to make her hair grow faster (lol she looked that up...she has baby fine hair). She's easily a size 10-12. She's also taller than her older sister by 3 inches.
My other 2 daughters are variations in between the older 2. My older 2 daughters are what convinces me a lot of weight is simply genetic. I know even people here on DU say it isn't, but when you have 2 kids from the same 2 parents who are both born at the same weight and exclusively breastfed and are on opposite ends of the growth charts, you know it has to be genetics. I do get upset when I hear doctors use growth charts without checking out history, or asking questions about the parents' childhood build. My ex-husband was super skinny and slight as a kid and teen. I wasn't - I wasn't pudgy but that was because my mom strictly controlled my eating (she was naturally thin, I wasn't). I was very sturdy, muscular, athletic and strong. Our kids were just variations of our own builds.
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