The Other Side of the Scale

It's everywhere: talk of the obesity epidemic in children, campaigns to improve school lunches... even one memorable article I read somewhere where someone was advocating taking obese children away from their parents. So I've felt a bit adrift recently after Ethan's one year pedi appointment where we found out that he had bottomed off the chart where weight is concerned. My reactions have skipped willy-nilly from "They must think I don't feed this kid..." to "What if there's something terribly wrong?" We were drawing blood anyway for the lead test, and so the pediatrician checked a number of things, 98% of which were fine. Low protein and low IGA resulted in a referral to a pediatric gastoenterologist.

That appointment seemed pretty anti-climactic (take a history, and yup - he seems pretty healthy) and resulted in an appointment with a nutritionist. Long story short, we're massively striving to find ways to get extra calories into this kid. I add a teaspoon of canola oil to every meal. Push proteins, fats, dairy, avocado, cheeses, butter - anything I can think of to give his calories a boost. We just had our followup appointments, and yay he gained .7 pounds! If we were pushing calories and he weren't responding we'd have to look at other problems, such as celiac disease. But I think we're headed in the right direction. Honestly, I think he's so busy/active that he doesn't pay attention to food cues. Rather than let him lead I'm going to have to be stricter about plunking him down and insisting that "We're eating now." Still roughly 2 pounds to go to get back on the charts...