We saw our new pediatrician last Thursday. I decided to switch for a few reasons. One was that our current pediatrician while great, only seemed great with "normal" kids. He seemed clueless when it came to Evelyn. The other reason is he is not supportive of delayed or selective vaccination of children. Now, I have absolutely no clue if vaccinations had anything to do with Evelyn or made her worse. What I do know is that it is possible, and I will never take that risk with my future children. I also won't take the risk of NOT vaccinating because I know how important it can be. So our future children will have their vaccinations spread out, not more than 1 live vaccine at a time, and we will delay starting them. There is NO reason a 2 month old needs to be injected with 6 different vaccines. They can't even have peanut butter until they are 2, but they can be injected with a million perservatives and live viruses multiple times every 2 months for their first 2 years of life?!?!?!?
Anyways.......after that vent......the doc weighed her. She was 25.5 lbs. At 3 she was 26.5 and at Children's in August she was 28.5 naked. The 25.5 was fully clothed with a full belly. Not good news. After 7 months of a very high calorie diet she stayed the same, and actually lost. Looking at her baby book she hasn't gained weight since about age 2-so almost 20 months. She is 1% for weight and now they noticed her height dropping. She's always been 95% for height, and now she is 40%. SO she's kinda stopping growing at all.
The doctor put her on a supplement drink called Kid Essentials. Its like the old people "ensure" drinks. He said he's never seen a kid gain on Carnation so we stopped that. He thinks it doesn't taste good enough to make her stop eating solids. She is going to get 2 a day which is an extra 550 calories and 20 grams of fat. She also was put on high doses of probiotics which is supposed to help "regulate" her. Her constipation is horrible, even with daily laxative. She hasn't gone in 8 days as of today :( He took her off all milk and dairy incase of a dairy allergy and because it's bad for constipation. He put her on high doses of Vitamin D as well. We also switched to iron free vitamins. Hopefully that will help her poop! We weighed her yesterday and our scale said 28 lbs!!!! After 4 days only. However, we don't know how much of that is poop weight......I hope she gained though! He said if it would work, it would work fast. If after a month or two she hasn't gained we will have to go ahead with the full workup of blood work, genetic testing, allergy testing and EGD's (camera down the throat). Obviously something is going on.
The bad part is the drink is soooo expensive. $12.00 for a 6 pack and she will have basically 2.5 packs a week x 4 weeks. My head is spinning just thinking about it. It's WIC elegible but we don't qualify for WIC by $4,000. Grrrrr....So I emailed the insurance company hoping they will cover some of it since it's for a medical problem. Otherwise, I don't know what we are going to do. I know they sell it by the case, so maybe that will be cheaper.
On to school. We originally were going to send Evelyn to St. John's for 4K. After her IEP we decided to go to the public elementary school for 4K and St. John's for 5K and onward. Today was Evelyn's preschool school conference. Now I know it's JUST preschool, but the teacher was concerned. She basically said Evelyn barely ever does what is asked, doesn't follow commands, can't do simple projects, can't stay at any activity more than 2 minutes, doesn't sit down with the rest of the kids, and is in her own little world. They said they rarely can keep her on track and she is by far the most mentally, emotionally, socially and intellectually immature one there :( They said after 1 hour of school she is just done. When we told the teacher we planned to send her every day next year she gave us her honest opinion. She told us that if Evie was her little girl she would not send her next year. If she can barely handle 2 hours a week, how would she handle every day next year? Plus now there are 15 students and 2 teachers. They said Evie needs tons of one on one. Next year it would be 30 students and 1 teacher. She would be expected to listen, behave, sit still, and do what is asked of her. She told us if we sent her to school next year we would probably be setting her up for failure. She just isn't ready. It also could start a life long hatred of school at the young age of 4. Not good.
She told us also to consider her age. She is very very young. It's hard enough for a 4 year old to start 4K but couple that with an extremely young 4 year old with special needs and it spells disaster. If she had been born on her due date, we wouldn't even have this issue. She'd automatically be placed a year behind.
She recommended doing one more year of preschool at just 2-3 days a week. Then hopefully when she is 5 she can go to "normal" 4k and start 5K when she is 6. She will be older than everyone, but will be more prepared. We both think holding her back a year will be best. She just isn't ready for school.
I was sad in the hallway while I waited for the conference. All the kids had made snowmen and drawn faces on them. Evelyn was the ONLY one who couldn't draw a face and was just scribbles. It made me want to cry. The poor kid never gets a break. Everything is 10 times harder for her. The last thing we want is school to be too much for her. I dread that she will probably be made fun of because she's different and is that "wierd kid" so putting her in school when we know she won't do well will only make that worse. She'll always be the under dog and the last one to do everything in her class. We think holding her back will help her grow up a little and then maybe she won't stand out as much when she does start school.
It's so hard to know if you are making the right decision for your child. Evelyn just has so many issues and will have a very difficult life the way it is. We really don't want to add to her problems and make life any harder.
So another year of preschool for us. I'm sure she'll be happy because she will have the same teachers and same kids.
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