Raising a Tiny Girl in a "Bigger is Better" World

              "Though she be but little, she is fierce."

I've struggled with whether or not to write this post for a few days now because we are so fortunate. We are so fortunate that E's doctor has finally decided to agree with us that there is nothing amiss with her. We are so lucky because there are people who have walked the same path as us and ended up in a different place. We are blessed that she is healthy and happy and smart and is still too young to understand the hurtful things people have said about her. I am trying to be grateful rather than feeling vindicated and angry even though I do feel both those things.

You see we have lived the last two years as the parents of "that girl". That tiny slip of a baby and then a toddler. The one half the size of your younger child. The one you've whispered to your co-workers about in the Best Buy, or other moms at the park or the library, the one you've seen running and playing and chattering away and asked in hushed tones, "What is wrong with her?"

In the Beginning...

When I was pregnant with E I was told she was going to be huge, 10+ pounds kind of huge, and it wasn't surprising to me because me and my sister were both massive babies. I was ready for baby with big, juicy rolls that would go straight into 0-3 month clothing. But on the day E was born the first thing I heard out of my nurse's mouth was, "God, she's such a little peanut! Your dates must've been wrong.". For several reasons we knew my dates weren't wrong and we chalked it up to the unreliability of ultrasound technology. We embraced our 7lb7oz string bean of a newborn girl and assumed she would grow, as babies do.




Brand new E!

As time went on E seemed tinier than her counterparts but not alarmingly so (in our minds anyway). She spent over two months in newborn size clothes, and I remember solely because I remember going to the Carters to buy her Christmas dress and the clerk asking me how old she was when I asked them to check for a cardigan in NB. I remember the shock on her face when I told her she was almost two months old. I remember her telling me that her nephew was the same age but was in six month clothing already. I smiled and said, "She's just tiny I guess!" and went about my shopping. But I couldn't help but feel a little slighted. Was it a bad thing to have a small baby?

E in her Christmas dress with her beautiful Aunt M

Our Experiences with "Smallness" in the Medical Community

It wasn't until E's four month shots that I realized that people would often see my beautiful baby for what wasn't "the same" about her. It was the beginning of my current reality as a mom the moment a nurse scolded and shamed me because E was in the 20th percentile but was born in the 50th. Everything about my parenting was questioned. We were told to pursue calorie dense formulas. We were made to feel like having a smaller baby was bad.

It was the first time I felt like I had failed as a mother.

E was so smart, speaking her first word at 6 months, mastering hide and seek and all variety of shenanigans well before other kids her age and yet it never mattered. It didn't matter that she was happy and funny. It didn't matter that she loved puppies or tuna sandwiches. All anyone ever cared about was that she was so small. That her percentile kept dropping- 20th, 15th, 10th, 5th, 1st...no percentile. They actually went so far as to tell me  when E was 18 months that in a group of 100 children her age she did not get a percentile because in that group compared to her peers she did not count because she was so small. In the eyes of the professionals, this girl did not count:

Every appointment and well-check after that was worse and worse. I started to dread E's upcoming appointments and any contact with doctors and nurses. I have spent many an evening crying over those appointments and the things the doctors and nurses have said to me about my precious girl. More than anything though I have pored over everything I have done with E since birth that could've "caused" her smallness. Was it that she was largely formula fed? Was it because we practiced baby-led weaning? Did we pass down inferior genes? In my mind we had to have done something wrong because everyone in the know was telling us we must be.

The Social Stigma of Having a Small Child

Between appointments I try not to think about the fact that E is tiny. Clothes are always a battle (she was in 3-6 month clothing until she was 1!) because obviously they are generally cut for the average body type of a North American toddler and E just doesn't have it. She's all little chicken arms and legs and a booty so teeny we have to cinch her jean elastics in all the way and double stuff her cloth diapers to keep her pants up. Lets just say BabyGap has taken in a substantial amount of our income in the last two years of fighting to keep pants on our ginger ninja. But that's okay because I figure when she's older she can enjoy the bevvy on clothes in the smaller sizes that I currently give the side eye while looking for a single item in my current size (its like a quest for the lost ark trying to find a women's large in our Walmart).

A recent picture of E on her way to preschool!

Most people make harmless comments when we go to the park or the drop-in playgroup about how small she is (usually in comparison to their kids) and I just roll with it. I feel like sometimes people think the size of one's offspring is a suitable topic for awkward small talk with other mom-quaintances and in our size obsessed culture that isn't necessarily their fault, so I let it go. I don't want to look for reasons to be hurt and angry when there are so many reasons to celebrate our wonderful life as a family.

But then there are the times when people's comments are not harmless, when they know full well what they're saying is offensive, and I have to catch myself. Let me start by saying, to every mother who has ever asked me or one of the other moms that know my baby girl with an expression of abject horror (and sadly there have been multiple), "What is wrong with her?", there is nothing wrong with my daughter. She is a remarkable child who is precisely who and what God intended her to be. She does not have to be like your children to be valid. Weighing less than them does not make her less than anyone. Sadly the person who clearly suffers from having something wrong with them is you. You have failed to see the innocent, wonderful child in front of you for what she is and have taken some different about her and tried to make it ugly. What is wrong within you to seek to find something horrible in something as glorious as a little girl like E?

(This is a photo from a day where I was asked "What's wrong with her?" by a fellow mom. It has totally colored how I see the photos from that day)

Aftermath

After having spent much of the last two years absorbed in issues of size and how size in North America relates to worth we are blessed to be finally turning a corner. E's doctor is satisfied that there is nothing "wrong" with her as of her 2 year check earlier this week and they will no longer be monitoring her size. She is small statured, clever, silly toddler full of tantrums and kisses and declarations of being a doctor (for puppies too!). She is just like your children were or are or will be.

E with sister K. They're 15 months apart but nearly the same size :)

Much of this post is just catharsis for me because I have needed to air all of this for so long, but I also hope that it might reach one or two people in its travels on cyberspace who this will impact. If you are a mom or a dad of a small baby and you are struggling with the societally engrained concept that "bigger is better" and how your child fits amongst their peers, my heart goes out to you. It is a hard road that not a lot of people understand and so many people judge without knowing. I am so sorry this is your journey. If you are one of those people who is forever insisting something is wrong with smaller babies and toddlers, please consider going forward; is what you're saying kind? Is it necessary? Is it helpful? If it is none of these please pull back. Curiosity gets the better of all of us I know, but mommy culture is already cruel enough- be the change we need in the world and see other people's struggle. And to everyone who made it through this lengthy blog post which saw a lot of sweat and tears (mostly tears) on my part I want to say thank you. Thank you for reading through a rambling novel of a post to, hopefully, glean my message to my E (and to all fun-size children, everywhere):

 Being small will never stop you from doing big things!