V had a similar start to Nakita, with very slow weight gain, she hadn't put on any weight when we were discharged, she was 2180 on dishcharge, a week later 2170, but lucky enough that in the third week she put on some weight so we were ok to keep going, she took 4 weeks to hit her birth weight so a bit quicker than V and things went along slowly until she was about 10 weeks then she started losing weight, so it was at that point we were "told" to use formula top ups, I am in two minds as to whether at the time this was the right thing to do or not, as there were a number of factors that resulted in the weight loss and I should have persevered for another week to overcome those issues and see how we went, especially after doing quite a bit of research afterwards.

I know what it is like having a baby with no fat stores at all, Nakita was all skin and bones as well, she has rolls of skin, and her bum was just a series of creases (like lots of bum cracks ), not even a little bit round or plumb. But as she was my first I knew she was small but didn't really realise how skinny until I was with other mums at a mums group and I saw chub next to my very skinny minny . She was 45.5cm at birth so quite tall, so that didn't help the "look" of her.

I completely understand the word FTT as well, that is what we encountered at 10 weeks, she was almost 1kg under the 3rd%ile. Hearing those words is like a knife through your heart, using the word "failure" to a mother is the most horific word to hear, I felt like I had failed.

I would have to agree that inserting a NGT may be a step backwards, with quite a few tube fed bub friends I have seen the impact that the tube has, and when you think about it, it would be horrible having a tube tickling the back of your throat 24/7 trying to swallow food, milk etc would be very uncomfortable, and I have seen bubs go backwards being on tube feeds.

A mum from mothers group had a little girl at 36 weeks who was SGA she was just on 2kg and she is a very petit little thing, and I find it interesting that her Paed like yours looked at the whole picture of her size, her growth and development milestones and even though she was quite tiny, similar to V, he never mentioned FTT as it was "normal" for her.

Have they recommended fattening up her meals, with butter, cream etc, to get extra fats into her that way as well?

N is doing well, when she started solids at 6 months she just started putting on weight, it was like a light turned on and she was off, we have been lucky in a few ways that she wasn't an active bub, the hypermobility meant she didn't roll until 12 months and has only just started crawling in the last few weeks, so we got extra time for her to chub up, if she was an early mover it might have been a different story, as when they are little and get moving they can move a lot quicker as they have less weight to shift and getting them to chub up while on the move can be even harder.

N lost 400 grams during her first stay, from loss to regaining back to her pre hospital weight it was 8 weeks. But at that stage she had enough chub for it to not be of a concern.

Sending you all the chubby vibes I can , I hope V doesn't need to go through too much testing