My son recently had his one year health check - along with me answering a lot of questions about his general development - "is he sitting/standing/walking/talking?"- his weight and length were recorded.

His length puts him at the 55th percentile and his weight is at the 25th percentile. His weight has always hovered around the 25th percentile which has been worrying me for months. Every time I'd ask the health visitors they'd say, "It's fine, he's growing." But I was still worried.

He's not the easiest of eaters, so I've tried to up the calorie count of his food recently - using a bit more butter, say, or giving him whole Greek yoghurt along with his fruit. I'm a normal animal mother, my deepest desire is to make sure my offspring is getting enough food. And at the 25th percentile, it didn't seem like he was getting enough.

My older son was a much more voracious eater. He started breastfeeding less than an hour after he was born, took to it perfectly and hasn't stopped eating for more than a few hours in the 13 years and 5 months since. He was always much higher on the weight charts, hovering just above the 50th percentile for both height and weight in his first year. At the time, mothers were advised to start giving solid foods at four months. I did. He loved it. I also introduced some formula feeds at the time as well. Though I was still breastfeeding him a couple times a day, he self-weaned at 10 months. He just wasn't interested any more.

Now though, I'm still breastfeeding my one-year-old between three and four feeds a day and it doesn't look like he's going to be ready to stop any time soon. I've been wondering, though, if maybe he's having too much breastmilk and it's preventing him from wanting more "proper" food.
My first stop for information about breastfeeding was KellyMom's Extended Breastfeeding Fact Sheet. I quickly saw that the breastmilk he is getting from me is an important part of his daily intake.

In the second year (12-23 months), 448 mL of breastmilk provides:
29% of energy requirements
43% of protein requirements
36% of calcium requirements
75% of vitamin A requirements
76% of folate requirements
94% of vitamin B12 requirements
60% of vitamin C requirements
-- Dewey 2001

As an aside, I've been noticing that I've become incredibly hungry lately. My appetite has increased enormously so that I am eating considerably more than I did even when I was pregnant. Yet I am at my pre-pregnancy weight and still losing, albeit slowly. I thought perhaps this may be the reason:

"Human milk expressed by mothers who have been lactating for >1 year has significantly increased fat and energy contents, compared with milk expressed by women who have been lactating for shorter periods. During prolonged lactation, the fat energy contribution of breast milk to the infant diet might be significant."
-- Mandel 2005

During my searches for more information about breastfeeding after the age of one, I was also looking for anything about whether or not breastfeeding after the age of one has an adverse effect on the long-term growth of a child. In short, I wanted to find out if my second son at the 25th percentile was going to end up shorter and smaller than my first son who was in the 50th percentile. Though they have different fathers, both their dads are the same height almost exactly.

I then found out about the World Health Organisations new child growth standards.

It turns out that the growth charts we've been using are based on the growth of babies who are "artificially fed" (ie formula fed) and from one country only. The new WHO growth standards "makes breastfeeding the biological 'norm' and establishes the breastfed infant as the normative growth model". The study involved 8,440 children from Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman, and the United States who were raised in similar environments without poor diets and infection. In addition, their mothers followed health practices such as breastfeeding their children and not smoking during and after pregnancy.

I breastfed my son exclusively until he was six months old and breastmilk continues to be a significiant part of his diet - just like the WHO advises. When I compare my son's length and weight to the WHO's growth charts, he is just under the 50th percentile in weight and just over the 50th percentile in height. And that makes me feel considerably better. According to these adjusted charts, he is on the same percentile my first son was. Yay!

I decided to have a look at my 13-year-old son's current height and weight on both the old and the new growth charts. On the old growth charts he's just over the 50th percentile on both his height and his weight. On the new WHO charts he's in the 80th percentile for his height and the 75th percentile in his weight. I'll be interested to see where my younger son is on the new charts as he grows.

For more information:
There is a ton of information about the new growth charts at the World Health Organisation's site
For more breastfeeding help and information, KellyMom is a very good place to start.