I’m sure after reading about the cardiology one year checkup a couple weeks ago, you were all wondering, “OMG WHAT ABOUT THE PEDIATRICIAN? SURELY THERE’S ANOTHER DOCTOR UPDATE!!” Well never fear, we have plenty of doctor’s appointments and I am happy to post a report on each one. The truth is, good defined milestones for posting these things aren’t always obvious (I mean, if I posted every time David did something cute, Google would run out of storage), but I know that when there’s a doctor’s appointment, I should post.
This past Tuesday was the 12 month pediatric checkup. After David had finished running some game on the nurses and thoroughly exploring the room we were in, the doctor came in. He looked at the chart, and basically the first thing he says is, “Looks like his growth has slowed a little more than we’d like.” I didn’t need to look over at Christy to know that she was having the same internal reaction that I was. Namely, “If we have to have another knock down fight with a doctor about feeding David, I’m going to hit someone.”
You see, at TCH after the first surgery, they were VERY paranoid about him not growing fast enough. So paranoid, in fact, that they presumed a massive problem would be there even before it happened. And I mean, I understand that his heart is less efficient than normal, and that he’s going to burn more calories than normal. I really understand. But after we’ve told one doctor, “no, we’re not going to add formula to his breast milk, Christy is just going to nurse him unless we actually SEE a growth problem,” I’d hope that they’d write that down and that would be the end. Of course, people are stupid, so they never do things that make sense. It literally took Christy telling one of them, “GFY, I’m nursing him.” before they just left it alone at the hospital. And then, of course, every time we went back for a checkup they would AGAIN inform us that we needed to be fortifying his milk EVEN THOUGH HIS GROWTH WAS NORMAL. So, needless to say, we are somewhat touchy about this particular issue.
Back to Tuesday. So the doctor is worried about his growth. He asks what we’re feeding him. We tell him. He says, “well you’re going to think this sounds a little crazy (Paul and Christy brace for impact), but I need you to add some heavy cream to his oatmeal in the morning. Or butter, if you feed him grits.” That's it? Really? He just wants us to make sure we’re feeding David enough. He did ask for us (read: Christy) to keep a log of what David eats and to bring it back in 2 weeks. I was shocked at the level of sanity. From the way he talked, it sounded like he has the same opinion of dietetics that we do - basically that it’s junk science. Seriously, these are the people who have made America the most obese and unhealthy place in the world, why the hell should we listen to anything they say? But I digress.
The nutshell version of all of that is that David should be 20 lbs instead of 18.5 (he’s basically been on the 5% growth curve since he was born), that we need to supplement some of his meals with butter and/or cream, and that we have to keep a log of his food for 2 weeks. The logging isn’t particularly exciting (we have done enough logging, thank you very much), but I guess it could be worse. For his part, David is enjoying the new diet. He gets oatmeal with coconut milk (delicious btw) or cheese grits in the mornings, he had indian food swimming in butter on tuesday evening, and today he had grilled wild coho salmon with a side of creamed spinach for lunch. The docs always said that he’d be skinny. I guess we will see.
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| Obligatory David Picture |
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