16 weeks old - or Poo, poo and oh yes - a bit more poo

You will no doubt recall poogate - which was superceded and surpassed in many ways by the nine day poo. Well the days without poo are now long gone. Since we went cold turkey we poo a lot.

Rufus was for a long time quite tricky to feed. He'd guzzle away for five or so minutes and then pull away, screaming and failing his arms about, punching my chest and tensing his whole body. He'd latch back on, do a few more sucks and then start getting cross again. I'd switch him to the other side and he'd go back to guzzling before going through the whole tantrum again. He wouldn't feed for longer than 15 minutes max which included time spent screaming and punching. He wouldn't relax until he had his dummy.

All this has changed since we got rid of the dummies. He now feeds for a good 30 to 45 minutes. He eats calmly and dozily and often nods off. I relish this time, mainly because I get to sit down. He gets that lovely milk drunk look after his feeds that he used to get when his was a tiny baby - it's gorgeous.

Along with all this feeding comes a lot of poo. Before I think he was eating just the bear minimum of food to keep himself going - which was why we were getting poos so sporadically. There just wasn't any wastage. Now his little tummy is full to bursting at every meal and he's got plenty left over after he's done a bit of growing. I have been doing a lot of washing, we've gone through a lot of wipes and the nappy bill has increased - but it must be much healthier for his insides.

I was expecting an enormous weight gain with all this feeding - but when I had him weighed he'd only put on a measley 4oz. He's even dropped from the 50th to the 25th centile for weight. The health visitor said she wasn't not concerned. She kept on saying she wasn't concerned. "I'm not concerned, no I'm not concerned about that, I'm really not concerned..." she told me that she wasn't concerned so many times that I started to wonder who she was trying to convince, me or herself? But I'm going to take him back in two weeks anyway just to see if things have improved at all. He seems happy and healthy enough - and he's certainly eating as much as I can give him - so as long as she isn't concerned......