I was looking back over old photo’s of my daughter and they made me think of an article that I read on news.com.au titled Now obesity epidemic has spread to our babies. I was shocked when I read this, the world has become so weight obsessed that infants can now be considered obese? My daughter was a fat baby, she wasn’t overfed, she started solids later than most, she was just a big kid. I personally loved all those little fat rolls and remember all the times I had to pry them apart when giving her a bath. I never considered her obese; to me she was just a happy healthy baby.

My daughter at nine months weighed in at a whopping 32 pounds, at 18 months she still weighed in a 32 pounds. It wasn’t until after she turned two that she started gaining weight again. She has always been a big kid and always been off the charts in height and weight. At two and a half she is skinny as a rail, 39 pounds and the size of an average 5 year old. All kids grow at different rates and it saddens me to think that there are mothers out there with larger than normal infants being told their babies are obese. As mothers we have enough to worry about without being made to think our normal babies are overweight.

Its no wonder that children as young as four think they are fat and need to diet when these types of headlines make the news. I have come across articles about distraught parents with older children that do have weight problems. These parents are stressed because they are not finding answers for their children and also because they are being judged as bad parents. I recently read some comments written about the Chubby Cupcake Boy, a child with a serious medical condition. My heart goes out to this poor kid that spends everyday of his life being judged by people who make assumptions.

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