I know many of you are waiting to hear an update. This is the best way I know to get the word out. As you may know Favorite Girl is off the growth charts and her Pediatrician became concerned at her well check. She has fallen to the third percentile for height and is not even on the chart for weight. She has now weighed 19 lbs for one year. We were sent to the University of Iowa Growth clinic today to see some specialists. We visited with a dietitian, a speech and language pathologist, a pediatric otolaryngologist and a pediatric speciality physician.
Overall they would not tell me what her height and weight goals are only that she needs to grow. Her diagnosis is, "abnormal physiological development for a 25 month old girl" and her perscription is, "she may not eat any naked foods". Everything she eats must be dipped in something, and whatever it is dipped in has to be the highest in fat and calories that we can possibly find. The list goes on and on but pretty much if you wouldn't eat it because you want to be healthy we should feed it to her. They said give her frosting, mallow cream, ranch, cheeze whiz, whipping cream, melted velveeta, melted butter, add jelly preserves to anything possible. If she wants ice cream she should eat it with the hot fudge, crushed peanut butter cups, oreos and cool whip with sprinkles on top, No Joke! That is really what they said. Any fruit she eats must be dipped in chocolate, pudding, heavy whipping cream. She may not drink any water, lemonade, juice, Kool-Aid. The only thing we should offer her is whole milk with Carnation Instant Breakfast added to it.
They are only concerned with her height and weight. As for her speech and language, they said she is beyond what they would expect for a normal two year old. The otolaryngologist watched her eat and drink to make sure her mouth "functioned" correctly, he said she is absolutley fine. The dietitian looked at Favorite Girl's food diary and said that we are doing well at offering well-balance meals but that she needs more than just the healthy stuff. Her other recommendation was no grazing. She said overall grazers eat less and therefore weigh less and so she has to have set meal times and then she cannot eat outside of those meal times. This is to help Favorite Girl understand that when we sit at the table we are there to eat, when we get down we are finished and we will not eat again until we sit back down at the table. They said to allow 20 minutes for a meal and 15 minutes for a snack, if she is eating well we may let her continue to eat otherwise she should get down and not be allowed to eat again until the next scheduled time. Obviously none of this is rocket science, now we just have to be very disciplined and stick to our routine.
They asked about other problems such as not sleeping through the night or not sleeping in her bed. We said she does just fine with bed and she has never slept anywhere but her crib or pack 'n play. They were very surprised by that. She thought for sure we would have other stuggles. Of course we went on to discuss other two year old struggles and behavioral issues we have and she explained to ignore all of the behavior. Walk away and do not give in to giving her any attention anytime she does something negative. Again things we all know as parents.
They asked whose personality she has and of course we told her mine. The Physician said if we can tell that Favorite Girl is trying to push my buttons that I absolutely must put on my poker face and not let her know that she is stressing me out (duh). Of course this sounds easy but we all know better that as parent's there are just sometimes when the buttons get pushed. Lord I pray for help because she is two and it sounds like she is already 14!
They also ran a bunch of blood tests, checking for a mega list of other things that could be going on. We will get those results later and I will update you.
In the meantime, we follow this plan for two months. We return to the local pediatrician here in a month for a height and weight check just as we always do and then we return to the growth clinic in Sept for a follow up. Obviously I asked about running into issues the other way with only eating "unhealthy" foods and they said we are doing this short term to get her where we need to be and then we will discuss future plans. Obviously after the roller coaster ride I have been on today I am exhausted so I am turning in for the night. At this point I don't have the energy to proof read this to ensure it even makes sense. Hopefully it gets the point across.
I need to add that I am praying that this is our only issue and it is not something larger than having an obstinate child. I feel this every single day, but especially after being in that speciality clinic today, I feel very blessed to have two happy healthy children. If all that is wrong is that she is small and we need to beef her up I promise to stop beating myself up over this and just thank my lucky stars for all that God has given me. Please say some extra special prayers for us. With love, Kelly
