Poor Sammy...

Soap box...TAKE YOUR KIDS TO THEIR WELL CHILD CHECKUPS!!!!

It's official...my kids call him Sammy. It hurts my feelings every time, because my DOG'S name was Sammy. My son now has the same name that the dog I had basically my whole life. But let's just leave it up to my kids to call him that...how about you and I stick to Sam.

We had a little scare with Sam at his 4 month check up. To be honest I considered not going. He seemed to be doing great. He hadn't been sick he was still a little chub. And the thought of taking my 3 children to the doctors office gave me a bit of anxiety. But my cute mom watched the others and I did take him.

The nurse had me undress him and take him out to be weighed and measured. I saw that he weighed 11.9 and was 23". We got back to the room and were left alone to wait for his doctor and I got to thinking that he pretty much weighed that much at his 2 month. Well, I was right. He had only gained 2 oz. since he was 2 months old. (he should have been gaining approximately 1 oz every day) He hadn't grown and his head hadn't grown either.

WHAT THE CRAP.

His Dr hadn't seen this before. she'd never seen it where all three, height, weight and head size hadn't changed. (which made everything that more scary)

So we ran a bunch of tests and some enzymes in his liver were high, and his growth hormone was low, but after talking to some specialists they thought that for the next couple of weeks to treat it as if the whole problem was caused by lack of calories. Try to get him to gain weight and then see if this levels come back to normal.

So basically...

I WAS STARVING THE KID.

This is what we have come up with as to what happened. Since I was mostly just nursing around the time he was 2 months I must have started to produce less and less milk. Over time his stomach actually got smaller, meaning that he felt full after eating. But his body was starving, holding on to each calorie to maintain those 11.7 lbs. That's why nothing else had grown.

Poor baby.

No one suspected a thing. He still looked chubby ( because he wasn't getting any taller) and he did look so much different than at 2 months because he was developing so many more skills. Like laughing, eye contact, grabbing things etc...

His Dr told me that had I skipped his 4 month appointment I would have started to notice a difference in him by 6 moths. He would have started to slow down developmentally because his brain would not be getting enough fat.

SO SAD!!!

It took a lot for me not to beat myself up. I just have to keep telling myself that I fed him when ever he was hungry. I drank water. I ate my meals. I thought everything was great. He was sleeping through the night and pulling off when he was full. So although it is my fault, I'm fixing it now.

This kid is a chunk now!! His appointment was on a Tuesday morning. I took him back Wednesday morning and just by feeding him a 4 oz bottle after each time I nursed he had gained 1 lb 2 oz!!!

I am taking him back on Monday to see if he has grown in length and if his head has gotten bigger. (I sure hope so) We're also going to run all of the same tests as before to see if his growth hormone levels and liver enzyme levels have gone back to normal.

There are a couple of bad things that have come out of this. The biggest one being that he doesn't like to nurse now. Actually he HATES it. I am only doing it 2 times a day now. But he LOVES LOVES his bottle and it's is kinda cute to see his reaction when he sees it. I do feel sad about not nursing anymore but as of right this second I'm over it. I guess Bradley is the only one to get "the good stuff" for the longest period of time. ha ha