Love it when life that was going a bit "crazy" turns a 180!
As a parent (more specifically a Mom) of a child that is young, cannot communicate fully his needs and you play a guessing game as to why he's not eating and melting away to nothing-ness its scary, frustrating and every other adjective that you can think of that conveys emotions of the sort.
The other day as I was watching my Donovan eat and eat and asking for "more" I sat back and sighed a huge sigh of relief. We are there, the child eats and eats and asks for more and actually tries new things. He tells me when he is hungry. He is filling out and he is growing vertically. All good things, and I feel for the first time since he's arrived into my life and care that I can relax and shed some worry.
I think we have some unofficial answers ... Advair for his asthma, looks to be at least part in partial the culprit to his vertical challenge-ness. And, I personally believe it was also responsible for suppressing his appetite to some degree. Once we removed the Advair, he grew within 6 weeks. It was about that time, I noticed he needed to eat more too. The pulmonologist doesn't think Advair caused a decrease in his appetite but I do. I'm the Mom and I'm with him all the time and he has done a huge appetite change since we removed Advair. I did some reading on Advair a year ago and I came across a medical article indicating that Advair could suppress a person's appetite. So I'm sticking to this thought!
And....I'm 99.9% sure gluten was the culprit for much of his not wanting to eat. As a very young toddler, eating made him feel "yucky", the more he ate the yuckier he felt. So he had associated eating with not feeling well. It took time to gain his trust again, but since removing gluten and being very conscious about it and what he eats, he knows we won't push food on him that will make him feel horrible.
Thanks to a person by the name of "Pamela" (click on link to visit her website) we can make foods that actually taste yummy and are gluten free.
Life is good at 180!
Hooray for mother's intuition! Good for you finding the right solutions for Donovan and not letting doctors keep him on Adair just because it suits their style. No one knows their child like a mom does. When will doctors wake up to that I wonder?
ReplyDeleteGood news that he's growing too!!
The doctor thought the Advair was contributing to his stunted growth but didn't think it had an effect on his appetite. I just beg to differ there! This doctor has been wonderful, I respect him very much - just differ in the whole "appetite" thing.
DeleteHe is growing but growth hormones are probably still an unwelcome necessity. We'll know more in June. Just glad that he's doing some "natural growing" finally!