Long ago, we used to call Sabrina "Tiny." To the point that my cousin Boyd sort of forgot her real name. ("Sabrina? Who's that?" "Tiny." "Oh yeah.") Now I know what tiny really is. Okay, Sabrina was tiny, yes. But...
I took Raiden to his 6-month appointment (on his 7 month birthday. Don't judge me for this. You'll have a chance for judging later on). He has dropped to the 2nd percentile for height and 0.91st for weight. Right, under the 1st percentile. If he'd always been that way, that would be one thing, but he's plateaued in his growth. Three scary words: Failure To Thrive.
It's hard to even write.
Here's the deal. Raiden is cognitively and physically (other than in size, obviously) meeting and exceeding developmental milestones. Crawling by 6 months, tooth at 6 months, currently understanding some words, smiling, happy, sleeping through the night for a while at 2 months, all sorts of wonderful normal-baby things. Why is he tiny?
There are two options. I'm a bad mom and have not given him enough food, or there's something wrong with him. Lose/lose. It's pretty sad when you're hoping you're a bad mom, because that's less scary than the other option. The doctor wants to see him back two weeks from his appointment to check his growth, and has instructed me to stuff him like a Thanksgiving turkey (my words, not his, in his defense). So that's what I've been doing. And offering a lot of prayers that go, "Please, Father, let my baby get fat." I'd be grateful if you'd join me in this particular prayer. That and, "Please let me look back on this time and laugh at how much I overreacted." That's another prayer that seems to fit.
I'm now going to wipe the tears off my keyboard and pray that last prayer again.
2 comments:
Momo,
Could it be his pituitary?
ju
Ju, that was my first thought, because of Owen (of course). But when I Googled it (NEVER do this), the symptoms didn't seem to quite match. Of course, the big (ha! See what I did there?) symptom did, which is being TINY. We'll see what happens next week. Hopefully he will have gained a pound and an inch and they'll say, "You are a bad mom." And I'll say, "Thank God." And it will be a prayer, not a profanity. And if he doesn't gain weight, hopefully they will say something like, "This is what is wrong. You only have to give your child a shot a day for the next 13 years." And I will say, "Well, at least it's fixable!" Right?
Post a Comment