So, people are always interested in your child’s age for some reason. It’s the height of small talk and will inevitably lead to some comment on size and developmental milestones (“Is she walking?” Etc).

I’m interested to know if mums of “typical” children ever feel like a comment on their child’s size is a criticism – if it ever makes you feel like you’re doing a bad job?

You see, Audrey is small. The last time she was weighed, she was travelling around the 9th curve on the Down syndrome chart. For those of you who don’t know, people with DS generally grow slower and are smaller than typical people. So the 9th on the DS chart is smaller than the 9th on the typical chart. 

She is 22 months old, wearing mostly size 9-12 months (just moving to 12-18). So basically she’s the size of a one year old and is nearly two. This means people are usually quite surprised by her age or that they guess her age and are way off. In the early days I definitely felt like I was to blame. It was my breast milk feeding her and I so wanted to make her grow big and strong, but she just kept slowly crawling up the lower curves. She was refluxy, so it was tricky getting her to gain weight, but once we started her on solids, she gained some good chunk. Unfortunately she was still weeny and yeah, it’s great to be petite if you’re a lady, so I’m sure this won’t be an issue in time, but right now, whenever I meet people (bus, supermarket queue…) and they say “Ahh, she must be about 10 months?” and I have to say; “Well, no, actually she’s 22 months”, I feel uncomfortable about it. I feel like they are wondering why on earth is this kid so small? And it’s often followed by the question “Was she premature?” and then I have to say “No, actually she was 6 days late”. Queue another surprised look.

Audrey’s size has skewed my idea of what size a baby should be, so I can’t really enter into the guessing game when meeting a new baby, because I have no idea what age to go for. In fact, how does everyone else know the average size of a 10 month old?! I didn’t know pre-Audrey and I certainly don’t know now. And why do I think that big bouncing baby = successful mother? 

She is a greedy piglet and we feed her a lot. In fact it was Audrey’s ‘decision’ to drop her nighttime bottle in favour of a snack! Ha. 

Anyway, if you meet someone and enter into the small talk of baby age, please try not to be overly shocked by their answer (whether the baby seems tiny or huge to you), either way, I’m sure the mummy won’t be thrilled that you think their child is mahoosive/minuscule! Thanks!

Audrey with a (giant!) teddy and her friend Edith (over a year younger than her!)….