New Plan of Action

It has been a rough week at the Zoo, with another visit to the pediatric gastroenterologists and a little sickness that kept Monkey down for a day or two. So we thought we would post some pictures of our recent adventures to accompany this medical update:



Monkey continues to fall off the growth charts, and so we kept our 'follow up visit' with the doctors from Prestigious Children's Hospital. We were lucky that they let us switch doctors this time, and we had a much nicer and more productive visit. He weighed in at 16 lbs, 3 oz, so he has been gaining weight faster in the past month than the month previous. We don't think they got an accurate measure on his height, because we're pretty sure he hasn't lost over an inch and a half.

Currently they are more concerned about his slow weight gain than his food allergies/issues. They are giving him one month to put on some weight, during which time we are following a special diet of fat-added baby food and formula supplementation. He is still nursing as often as he likes. If he hasn't gained much weight when we see them next month, then we will talk about doing a scope. There are several reasons why we are very reluctant to do the scope, not the least of which is that he will have to go under general anesthesia. The week before the scope, we will have to feed him all of the foods that bother him so that the scope will show what kind and what degree of irritation those foods cause. Needless to say that sounds like a terrible week. So we are hopeful that we can get him to put on some weight and he will outgrow his food allergies.

His special diet includes baby formula made according to their special instructions and adding butter or olive oil to his baby food. Unfortunately with his fever the past few days he has not had much appetite and has outright refused the Enfamil. We had a little better luck last night with the Similac, but he is still not drinking it this morning. We are trying various sippy cups and bottles and even just cups, so hopefully something will click here shortly. He also refused his butter, corn and squash yesterday, which is a shame because it smelled really good. On the other hand, he is chowing down on the Gerber yogurt drops (peach flavored) and thinks bananas are pretty fun.

In other news, it seems like Dog is on track to gain a significant amount of weight by hanging out under the highchair and sometimes even just licking the food right off of Monkey's shirt.