Is My Baby Girl Too F-t?
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
My mother-in-law just sent me an article entitled “When is your chubby baby too chubby” I wouldn’t take it so personally if I wasn’t already a little worried about my four-month-old daughter.
When I took Mika in to the doctor for her most recent check-up, the nurse started chuckling when she looked down at the scale. “Sixteen pounds, eight ounces! Wooweee!” “Um, doesn’t that actually say ‘five ounces’” I asked demurely. The point five indicated half a pound, or eight ounces. And it was at that moment that I realized I had become totally crazy. I was worried about what my adorable baby weighed. I was worried that if she was too chubby now (she’s in the 95th percentile for weight), she would spend her life obsessing over her thighs and rear end.
Last year, when I found out that I was having a girl, I immediately started worrying about how to instill in her a positive body image and a healthy relationship with food. I remember so vividly, and painfully, those teenage years — when I wanted to hide under a burlap sack.
So, while I’m of course not really worried about my baby being scarred by her adorable layers of chub, I am really worried about raising an emotionally healthy girl who feels great about herself. Any tips from experienced moms out there? (I mean, aside from not writing things about them that they may find really embarrassing one day.)
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
