To Marie, I read with interest your question about the one year old who
seems to be healthy and thriving and refuses solids and is small.  I
recently had a client whose older baby was not interested in eating
solids (15 months). This baby was mildly anemic. The mom had difficulty
getting the iron supplement into her that had been prescribed. She ended
up finding a rice bran syrup in the natural foods store that was iron
fortified and began giving this to the baby.  The baby loved the rice
bran syrup and as her iron levels picked up, she became more interested
in eating other foods.  This mom also offered solids prior to nursing in
the daytime, but nothing worked until the rice bran syrup.

My children all started solids around six months and were all relatively
small at 1 year and very healthy. Interestingly, though birth wts varied
from 7 lbs to 10 lbs (over 4 kids), they all weighed about the same thing
at one year. Our ped thought that is just the way they are genetically.
My 3rd kid was very tiny at age 2-1/2 and was even worked up for possible
growth hormone deficiency (he had a bone age of 18 months at 2 yrs. 8
mon), and was in the 3rd percentile. Interestingly, he began nursing a
great deal after his  sibling was born and in the next several months
caught up to the 10th percentile and in later years, hangs out around the
30th. He has always been a picky fussy eater.  My two grown children
though are both on the small side (my 21 yr old son is 5-8ish; my
daughter is 5ft 2in) and I do have two grandmothers who were under 5 ft
tall, so I assume it is genetic.

BTW, I have heard recently that there
seem to
be anatomical differences in people's tongues with some people being born
with up to 20 to 30% more taste buds which may mean that they pick up
bitter undertones that others with less taste buds don't -- this possibly
leads to "fussy eating".

It always bothers me though that children are fussed over so much that
are healthy but just small.  After all, there is a broad continuum of
normal among humans including size.

Ione Sims, GNM, IBCLC