Cash had his weight check appointment at the doctor's office yesterday to see if we've put some pounds on this little monkey in the past three months. I'm happy to report that he was up to close to 23 pounds - over one and a half pounds gained. This pushed him back onto the weight percentile charts at 7th percentile. Not gigantic or anything but I will take it!
Since his 18 month check up where he was off the chart for his weight, we've been on a nightly regimen PediaSure before bed, trying to get him to eat tons of high-fat healthy foods like hummus, guacamole, nut butters, whole milk dairy, and keeping a food diary of his intake and, for lack of better metaphor, output. I was pretty sure going into the appointment that we weren't going to see any gains and that I would be calling up specialists on the car ride home. Cash has never been and continues to be a small eater. Not picky per se, he eats a lot of variety and we have very few foods that he outright refuses, but he just doesn't eat a lot. Like at breakfast if he eats half a cup of yogurt and two bites of bagel it's been a stellar morning. We've tried restricting his milk intake, cutting down on snacks, increasing snacks, giving a multivitamin, stopping his daily Miralax when his constipation issues abated, giving him a fiber gummy when they showed up again, and the list goes on and on. We tried everything and he still is just tiny with a very small, lowercase "t". His 3 month old cousin Lucy looked like she was going to soon dwarf him when he visited. So we were starting to get concerned...
However, I think in all of this, especially after being reassured by the doctor yesterday that we have a small but HEALTHY little boy, that I kind of need to relax a bit. I was so convinced the doctor was going to give us bad news that I was already starting to cry in the car on the way over. When she told us that he was gaining weight and that we could breathe a sigh of relief, I kept her in the office for another 30 minutes asking a bunch of "what ifs" as if I didn't believe her. Cash may just be a small guy for now and isn't that interested in eating. It sounds crazy considering who his parents are but it just may be the case. So I think for now I'll keep trying to bulk him up with healthy, fatty foods (because really, I don't have any problem keeping a variety of cheese in the house) but I'm going to try to not count every last cracker or spoonful of yogurt that he puts in his mouth. Although I may have to take a video the next time he eats guacamole...the kid loves some guacamole.
