My "little" girl...

For those who don't know Megan...she is little. Petite, people always tell me. I was worried about this fact for such a long time... and it has taken me a long time to accept that this is the proportions of my girl.

Here is a bit of her back-story.

Megan was a good size when she was born- 6lbs 14oz (or just over 3kg) and 48cm long. Not really anything to suggest that she would take after her 6ft+ dad but that wasn't a huge concern!

My friend had told me not to buy many size 0000 clothes because the babies grew out of them too quickly. I had bought a couple just in case and was glad of it...they were too big! Hubby had to dash out soon after Megan was born to grab a few 00000 clothes, just so her early photos weren't always of her hiding amongst jumpsuits! It's funny to look back on those 00000 clothes now and marvel at how tiny they are.

She started breastfeeding well, and all seemed lovely. But she did not put weight on fast and I was always worried about my milk supply. I had 2 people in my life who had had serious issues with breastfeeding and undernourished babies, so I was always panicky about Megan's feeding.

My mum and many women around me were of the pro-choice-for-baby-feeding persuasion, so I had no pressure to continue breastfeeding, except from myself. I wasn't gung-ho about it, but wanted to give it a good go. Alas, after 6 weeks of slow weight gain, and almost no milk ever able to be expressed, Megan went onto formula.

It was such a relief to have made that decision- I was stressing myself out over her size and my suply constantly. Our mother's group consisted of about 8 mums and bubs all born within a few weeks of each other, and Megan was one of the smallest. I had always thought it was to do with my low milk supply, but despite moving to formula, Megan's size didn't dramatically change. Had I made the wrong decision and my supply was fine after all? We'll never know, I guess.

She was always on the lowest percentile of all the growth charts, but the nurses assured me this was fine, because she was in proportion and her growth was steady.

So after finally realising that Megan will always just be small (perhaps taking after my grandmother who is only about 5ft 3), I got used to buying clothes that SHOULD be a size too small for her. When she turned 2, she was in size 1 clothes, and so on. The other mother's group kids were the opposite- 3 years old, buying size 4 and 5 clothes.

She is still about half a head shorter than the kids in mother's group and she gets clothes passed down from one of her BFF's who is only 6 weeks older. It's always been a bit of a joke how different the sizes of the kids are, some are VERY tall and then there's Megan! She and Alex often get mistaken for twins because he is almost the same height. I can't be bothered explaining it anymore...I just smile and walk away!

So you can imagine my surprise, after 4 years of automatically grabbing a size smaller than her age, today I had to keep grabbing bigger sizes of singlets. 4s were too small!! AMAZING!

She will never be on the Australian Olympic basketball team....perhaps a gymnast instead??

**For those interested, I had the same worry about milk supply when feeding Alex. He was always just SOOO hungry and never slept, that we moved him to formula much earlier. He is about average in his growth, not the same small frame of his sister. Perhaps it was because we moved him to formula sooner. Again...we will never know.