We’ve been doing a lot of things to see what is up with her petite-ness. I think where I left it was that we were giving her some formula but still nursing every 2 hours in hopes that that little bit of supplementing would do the trick.
Plot twist: It did not do the trick.
We gave it about 6 weeks with frequent weight checks, essentially zero weight gain. We were starting to see her length and head circumference affected by her lack of weight gain and that was no good.
We checked her labs, and thankfully, all of that came back normal.
That forced our hand to move to primarily formula, which by this point, I was totally fine with because sheesh, she needed to get bigger and it was obvious that something wasn’t working. So we had to get her up to 24 ounces of formula per day which was not the easiest of tasks.
We have her on between 22 and 26 ounces a day and she nurses primarily at night now. And finally we are seeing some actual gains, which is making everyone feel a little better.
At her nine month appointment we got the okay to start her back on foods as long as there aren’t any dramatic decreases in her volume intake. She has a fairly strong tongue thrust reflex which makes it hard for her to get pieces of food to stay in her mouth, but she does pretty well on purees. She doesn’t always tolerate all of her bottles the greatest and sometimes she wants to eat ALL THE FOOD and sometimes not, but hey, I can say the same for myself!
The goal is that she gets back on the curve by 15 months. She's a petite 12.5 pounds right now!
It makes me a little sad/frustrated/angry that for whatever reason breastfeeding was so hard for us in the weight gain department. Maybe I didn’t produce enough. Maybe she burned too many calories while nursing. Maybe a million things that don’t really matter right now.
Overall, she is finally heading in the right size direction.
Developmentally? She is a tiny rockstar – she has been crawling for months, but finally is up on all fours, puling up on everything, waving, clapping, and grinning from ear to ear whenever she isn’t crying or sleeping!
We often get a lot of strange looks when people who don’t know her see her – she surprises everyone and I usually just say something about her being sweet and portable. Not a preemie, not neglected, not anything but small and loved and perfect just the size she is.
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