Yep - even 100 years ago, the preference was for very chubby babies. I have some old crochet directions from the 1940's for baby clothes - the babies in those pictures were very, VERY chubby. My mother told me one time that my grandmother said you could tell a healthy baby by how many "rings" of fat there were around the baby's legs and arms - the more rings of fat there were, the healthier the baby was. If they had enough fat (and potentially enough fluid reserves), they could survive a stomach bug, but the thin child didn't have any reserves from which to draw, and quickly became dehydrated.



But that was back before the days of pedialite, anti-diarrheal and antiemetic (anti-nausea, anti-vomiting) meds, or IV fluids to avoid deadly dehydration from a stomach illness.



(side story: DH's uncle apparently succumbed to such an illness as a baby - this would have been back in the 1910's or 1920's, since MIL was a little girl at the time. Story goes that MIL's baby brother was just old enough to be crawling around on the kitchen floor, found a piece of raw onion and ate it, and that's what made him so sick, at least that's what they blamed for his illness and death. Could have just as easily been some kind of stomach bug. Nevertheless, without modern treatments, he did not survive.)



These days, any parent who allowed their child to become even half that fat (especially at such a young age) would be thoroughly lectured on the dangers of obesity by the baby's doctor.