More Parents Putting Babies On Diets?

Posted by Vulnadia on Dec 02, 2010 at 08:38 AM The more I think about this, the more it just plain makes me MAD MAD MAD! Now, I have to admit, I have never had a "Fat" or "Pudgy" baby, but I cannot imagine putting a baby on some sort of a diet! I fought the health unit & the WIC program for the past 4 years over my kids and their size/weight charts, heck I even fought their glares & bad advice during my last pregnancy (they actually DARED fuss at me & give me problems over having gained 23lbs by 5 months saying I had gained too much too fast to which I just laughed at them and let them know my specialist fussed at me for not having met my 100lb weightgain goal for 5 months!) Then, once they changed the WIC voucher program/foods, I was told that America is too fat hence the changes...during the same meeting where they got on to me for my daughter being underweight and my sons being short for their age (no, REALLY? THEY ARE TRIPLETS DO THE MATH!) I have to wonder how many mothers out there have received the same info unnecessarily and quite unfounded only to become seriously worried and take action? Does this mindset lead to giving us as Americans a complex of being "Fat?" I thought it was common knowledge that babies ESPECIALLY put on pudge/fat before growth spurts...in fact I have watched my own daughter get tiny little bits of pudge (which looks funny on a tiny person, see above weight/chart issues for the irony) then lose it weeks later in a growth spurt! So why oh WHY would you put the fear of FAT into a woman's head to the point where they put their baby on a diet? Unless the child is obviously & beyond a medical DOUBT in danger of being obese at much too young of an age (and I am referring to the extreme cases you see on the cover of the Enquirer not the "I'm fat" mentality and complex given us ladies by the modeling industry etc that makes us conditioned to want to look rail thin and eat brown rice & vegetables (to grab a phrase from a racy movie, lol!) then a child does NOT need a diet! How many kids are starving because of this? What will be the longterm effects on our kids and society as a whole over this alarming trend? It's common knowledge that once a child reaches a certain age they begin to eat almost NOTHING over that picky eater stage, so WHY try and rid them of the storage system the body has to combat these stages? How many kids are subjected to the false "I'm fat" complex bits where it's all asthetics and in the Mom's pre-programmed brain that they MIGHT be getting fat instead of the reality that their baby is NORMAL and then what problems might this incur? In a perfect model body society where self-image is EVERYTHING and society as a whole has driven us as women to set unnatural standards for ourselves when we look in the mirror, what are we to do? Will our children suffer? I grew up as one of those kids who, as a deterrent for a myriad of reasons, was told I was FAT and couldn't wear this or that, needed to only eat this or that etc...when I look back at the pictures of myself at some of these given points, I had a shocking realization that in fact I had NOT been fat, in fact I was quite SMALL at the time, giving my brain the idea that when I looked in the mirror, that I did NOT like what I saw...poor self image begins in places like that! Why oh why would you do that to your kids? Why would you want to? Unless a child is truly medically at risk, why put them on diets? What do you think? Is this an alarming trend or something we really need to all support? original More Parents Putting Babies on Diets