Friday, January 15, 2010

Success! Finally!

As anyone who has been keeping up with my blog would know, Dallin has had a little trouble gaining weight since he was about 4 months old. For whatever reason, he just hasn't been able to gain enough weight to keep up with his growth curve, or any growth curve for that matter. He has moments when he'll be doing well and then he'll drop off again. In every other respect, he seems like a perfectly healthy baby. He looks healthy (he's small, but he's not skin and bones, he's got fat on him), he's a very happy baby, he can stand up by himself while holding onto a chair, couch, toy, etc., and is working on crawling. I just haven't been able to get him to gain much weight. Even when I gave him some super calorie formula for 2 weeks on the pediatrician's recommendation, his weight did go up, but not really any substantial amount, just an average amount.

At the beginning of this month, he hit rock bottom. In one month, he did not gain any weight. Not a single ounce. I'm not exactly sure how that happened (I promise I was feeding him!). I knew that I needed to do something different to help him gain weight. I'm willing to give Dallin formula if that is what is necessary to keep him healthy, but I wanted to try every other possibility before going to that. So I started working with a breastfeeding specialist. She gave me some tips and I tried them for a week. Then I took him back to the specialist yesterday to be weighed again. I'm always nervous when I take Dallin to be weighed. We weighed him, and in one week he had gained 4 ounces. The specialist was expecting him to gain about 1-3 ounces. He finally gained more than expected instead of less!!! I'm so happy that something has finally worked. Seriously, this was like the 3rd best moment of Dallin's life; #1 being when he was born and #2 when the cardiologist told us his heart was fine.

I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing and hopefully it will continue to work and he'll keep growing well. I would love to be able to be past all these weight problems. I know it's only been a week and that we need to keep him gaining like this a lot longer than that, but we finally have a good start.

And I'm happy to report that he has gotten his first tooth!
Tooth #2 will follow shortly.

4 comments:

Amy Meyer said...

YAY! I am so happy that his is gaining weight! And getting teethers! Was it the breast feeding that helped or something different?

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I wrote you a novel. :)

Good job with sticking to breast feeding if that's what you want. I understand what your going through. I hate going to the Dr. because they are always telling me that I need to feed Myles more so he can gain weight. It's hard because I feel like I'm being a bad mom or something sometimes. I try to explain that Andrew's ridiculously skinny, but still. I had to go completely to formula, which was really hard for me at first. And, I feed baby food and formula constantly. I even still get up like three times in the night to feed him. Anyways I'm glad he's gaining weight. Good luck!

And I love his tooth! Maybe his slobbering will go down now? Hope your doing well. annie

Unknown said...

YAY for dwallaburton. Good job little champ. You know I've never spelled out dwallaburton before... it's kind of a silly looking word.

Karen C. said...

His little tooth is so cute. He just looks so precious. I'm glad he is gaining weight. I hope he can keep it up!