Wednesday, November 07, 2007

You're going the wrong way!

Kiernan had another doctor's appointment yesterday and I was hoping that in the 1.5 months since his last doctor's appointment he would have broken past his 19.7 lb mark and hit that glorious 20lbs that most boys hit by the time they're like, 8 months old :P

Unfortunately, it was not to be. He is down to 19 lbs and that's not good. It's not horrible. It's not earth-shatteringly awful, but, it's not to be ignored.

The most likely scenario, and the one I'm 99.99 % sure it is, is that he's too active for the amount of food he eats. He's a picky eater, and I'm imagining that because he's always had such a sensitive tummy it's not always FUN for him to eat. On top of him not being a big eater, as he's started to wake less in the night, he's been dropping the amount of formula he drinks. Every time he drops a night feed he's dropping calories per day because he doesn't replace any of that in the amount he drinks when he's awake!

What's a mom to do?! Last night he fell asleep in the car without his nighttime bottle (not that we can get him to have more than a few ounces at bedtime anyways) so he woke up at midnight hungry. We gave him almost 8 oz! He'll drink it in the middle of the night, but do we want to encourage him feeding night instead of when he's awake??

So we'll be adding olive oil to his food again, trying to encourage him even more strongly to have milk during the day, and hopefully we'll get him to gain some weight.

In the meantime, we now have new tests we have to take him for to rule out the .01% chance it's something else. These fun options include cystic fibrosis and celiac disease. So November 21 we'll be heading back to CHEO for blood tests and a sweat test (can you imagine them having him run on a treadmill with sweat dripping down? ha ha). Oh well, I'm sure it can't be worse than the milk scan.

Any ideas on what to feed a picky eater who doesn't like to eat grown-up food and can't have anything with dairy or soy - please share! :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My son was always on the low end of the weight scale. 25% percent or below and I swear by the snack trap. Some kids are just grazers and don't like to eat big meals. Fill it with whatever he likes and let him carry it around all day. I also had to start feeding him stuff with a higher fat content. An oatmeal cookie a day won't kill him. I think we're encouraged so much to push the fruits and veggies that we forget that fats are an important part of the diet for little ones too. Try checking out the gluten free section of your local health store if you haven't already. A lot of that stuff is dairy, rice, corn and soy free as well.