Our little boy grew! Well, in some areas...
"Are you talking about me again?"Carson had his 6-month checkup 3 weeks ago. And nothing like a trip to the Dr's office to make you feel like a bad mother. After arriving and being taken back to a room, the assistant promptly got to taking measurements, height and weight, and then came back with the stats print-out and announcement "The Doctor's going to want to talk to you, because his weight has dropped and everything else is lower too." Oh great...Just what I needed. I thought he was eating just fine. He was sleeping well at night (hooray?) and was just a generally happy baby overall. What could I have possibly done wrong to cause his weight to drop? 20 minutes later of wondering and waiting, the doc comes in and does his exam. Everything seems normal until we get to the issue of eating.
"I'm a happy boy 97% of the time!"Long explanation short: He was previously getting about 24oz of milk per day (6, 4oz feedings), but based on his height and weight and where he needed to be, I should have been feeding him about 40oz per day (who knew, right? I mean, he never cried when he finished a bottle). Doc says his body is just barely functioning to keep his heart and organs working (just what a mom wants to hear, right? That she's basically starving her child unintentionally?) and that I needed to start feeding him every 3 hours around the clock and make sure he got at least 800 calories per day. Wow! I soon had a lot of work ahead of me for the next 2 weeks. And no more sleeping through the night from 7pm - 6am :(
Less than 2 weeks later, we hit success. Carson had put on nearly 2lbs in 10 days! So while he still isn't at the approximate 18lbs he should have been, we're still working on it. But it's better than having put on less than 1/2lb in 2 months. It's still a lot of work - having to feed him every 3 hours to keep up with the growth and make sure he's on track for our next visit. However, some of his skills have improved because of the weight gain. So Hooray to a healthy growing boy! (and yay to mommy for learning what not to have happen again)
3 comments:
Seriously, I wouldn't have done anything different. If your baby is sleeping and seems content after being fed, what else are you to think?? And 18lbs at 6 months...Audrey was only 16.5 lbs and I never got any crazy talking too. But I know every kiddo & doctor are different. Good work on getting him up in weight though if that is what the dr suggested.
Good for you on doing it. I've know a lot of kids smaller then that at 6 months and never had a talking to. I have a hard time with doctors having an exact measurement but it sounds like carson is doing good. Yay He is so cute.
Glad to hear you got his weight up and things look good! Hope things are still going well. Don't give yourself too hard a time, you ARE taking him to his well visits for a reason, right? That's what they are for.
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