I took Rachel in for her 4 month well-child visit last week. Much to my surprise, I found out that she is not gaining weight like she should be. I have never had a kid (or, let's be honest, a family member) have trouble with gaining weight. I've had many comments over the past 3 weeks about how she looked 'so little' or 'very delicate' compared to the other babies in our neighborhood that are her age. I didn't think much of it, because Braden and Rebecca were (and are) tall for their ages, so they looked healthy but thin. I thought the same thing was happening with Rachel. At two months old she was 70th percentile for height and 40th for weight. Last week she was 83rd percentile for height and only NINTH percentile for weight!!! I was shocked to find out that in two months she had grown like two inches but she had only gained 10 ounces!
Everything else about her development is normal, so the doctor suggested she drink more formula and that we mix it to a 'high-calorie' concentration with an extra scoop and a half per bottle. That means she now gets two bottles a day and I only nurse her two or three times a day. In two or three weeks we'll start baby cereal, which I expect will help a little. Until then, I gotta make a run to Costco tomorrow, because I'm already running out of this:
I'm totally on board with helping her gain weight and be healthy, but I'm a little bummed about the extra $$$ outlay.
2 comments:
She IS teeny. Make sure you take a picture of her right now, blow it up to an 8x10, put her weight percentages on it and doctor's instructions. Then when she is a teenager and complains about being fat, you can pull it out and say, "Look here, you are not fat!! When you were little we had to ADD calories to your milk because you were SO small..."
Maybe you could take her "down to the Wal-Mart" and take a picture of her on a yucky pink blanket--then she could look like her Aunt Katie!!
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