Cate’s four-month pediatrician appointment was yesterday. Our girl is now in the 95th percentile for weight at 16 pounds, 11 ounces. Holy mother of god, no wonder my back hurts all the time! It’s hard to believe that when she was born, she was in the 5th-10th percentile for weight. I think it’s safe to say that she caught up with a vengeance.

For anyone who cares about the other statistics: She’s in the 50-75% range for height (24 1/2 inches), and her head circumference is at a whopping 97th percentile – not surprising, considering the noggin size of both of her parents.

I was starting to worry that my pediatrician thinks I’m obnoxious, because every time she tells me Cate’s weight, I always get this sort of worried look on my face and I’m like, “um… is that ok?” So finally yesterday I told her that my concerns are not really about Cate, it’s about my own history, and I told her about my gastric bypass, and how I worry that there might be some kind of “fat gene” that I could pass on to her.

The pediatrician now quite possibly thinks I’m insane for babbling away about my personal issues like that, but she handled it well. She said she was glad that I told her, since of course we want to make sure that Cate is healthy, so that’s something we want to keep an eye on. But she said that for now it’s nothing to worry about, and she’ll probably burn off most of her pudge when she’s a toddler and starts getting more active.

In the meantime, I’m trying really hard not to worry about it, because the last thing I want to do is project my own neuroses onto my daughter. I think about how when I was little, my mom always complained about how fat she was, and was always on a diet (and I think she was probably a size 8 at the time, so seriously: she was not fat) and that definitely had an impact on how I think about my body. I don’t want Cate to pick up any of that from me. I know it’s practically impossible for a female to grow up in this society with no body image issues whatsoever, but I’d like to be as positive an influence on her as possible. I’m working on that now, so it hopefully won’t be an issue when she’s older.

P.S. I don’t want to get too obnoxious with the video links, but I upload lots of them for the grandparents. If you want to see yet another video of Cate in the jumperoo, or any of the videos posted so far, you can go here to check them out.