Eight Months: Changing things up a bit

In midwifery school we were taught about horses and zebras.  The thought is that if I see a woman with shortness of breath and a history of asthma, she most likely has an asthma exacerbation.  It's unlikely she has a blood clot in her lung, a pulmonary embolus.  Asthma is the horse.  The pulmonary embolus is the zebra.  I need to know about the zebras but most often it's going to be the horse.

I've been dwelling on Miles' weight since we were told he was underweight at his four month check up.  That means for more than four months I've thought about his weight every day, about how to get him to eat more, about the number of ounces he's taking in and what kind of long term effects his low weight will have on his brain development.  Our pediatrician, who happens to be a friend of mine at work, has told me not to worry, that it's her job to worry about him and his weight.  It's not quite possible for me not to worry about a potential abnormality in Miles' growth and development.  The problem, I've recently come to realize, is not so much Miles' weight.  The problem might be our pediatrician.  Or, more specifically, my relationship, as a worried mother, with our pediatrician.

I'm not saying I'm ready to jump ship yet.  I've just noticed a few things through this ordeal that may not work for me as a parent.  At our last visit she wanted to do some blood tests because he was staying in the third percentile for his weight.  To me, the fact that his percentiles weren't dwindling any further was an indication that he had plateaued in his percentile.  It would make more sense to seek out an answer for poor weight gain when it was actively happening, not when we were maintaining the status quo.  In addition, she ran a test to check for celiac disease, a disease where the body has a reaction to gluten.  When I looked up the test in my professional resources at work it indicated that testing children under the age of 2 was of little to no value as the test was not accurate in this age group.  Why are we running tests that won't give us any meaningful answers?  Why are we running tests when his weight has stayed in the same percentile? Why are we running tests at all if we have a clear etiology for his poor weight gain: high activity level and low calorie intake.

Furthermore, when I went to my professional resources and put his weight and age for his 8 month check up into a growth calculator, he comes out to the 4.7 percentile.  Not 3rd.  In addition, the resource informed me that a more accurate delineator of poor growth is a weight to length ratio, not an age to weight ratio.  By the weight to length ratio he is in the 4th percentile and anything above the 2nd percentile is considered healthy.

Basically, I feel that because of the type of parent I am - one who will research everything and stress about the littlest abnormality - I need a calm and reassuring pediatrician.  I need someone who won't jump to testing.  I need one who will take all this in stride, understand that most kids are normal.  Especially when the resources I'm using keep telling me he's on the low side of normal.  But he's still NORMAL.  I need my pediatrician to tell me he's a horse, not a zebra.

In other news: we went to the zoo,

Ms. Giraffe

we watched the Ravens make it into the Superbowl,

Dan's popping some clebratory bubbly!

Fireworks at Dan's house after the Ravens
made it into the Superbowl

and we visited the Carscadden clan for dinner this week.  Aunt Mary Ann, Uncle Bill and Aunt Trace were enamored with our little guy.  Mary Ann had a hard time watching Miles get thrown in the air.  She cringed each time it happened.

Swim class was better this weekend - no vomit, no crying or fussing.  Miles has started to anticipate when water will hit his face and he's started to hold his breath.  He's so good at floating on his back that we've moved on to a new hold where he's doing most of the floating work himself.  Yesterday he was passed underwater to me by the swim instructor.  I'm finally having fun in at swim lessons!

Here is our little dwarf this week:

No one knows what's going on here

Playing with my truck

Cheese and cheerios

I like to relax while I take my bottle

What? There's a cat in my chair?

Hey cat! Get outta my chair!

Easily distractible while eating.

Father/son relaxing before bed

Someone is obviously tired

I am so lucky

Let me in!

If I can't go over, maybe I can fit under...