Nutrition

Lizzie has been slow to gain weight since she was born. I've been nursing her when I'm with her and pumping at work so I can leave bottles of breastmilk for her when I'm not home. She has a good appetite, but for whatever reason she's not putting on weight very quickly. When she was in the hospital, the neurologist attributed the slow gain to the fact that she'd probably been having small, unnoticeable seizures for a long time.

We had an appointment on Tuesday with Nutrition at Children's Mercy. We met with a registered dietitian, who told us that they want Lizzie to be gaining 19-24 grams a day. (Her pattern so far has been to gain about 13 grams a day.) So the plan to try to get her to put on a little more weight is that we will add a teaspoon and a half of formula to the bottles of breastmilk that she gets while I'm at work--basically that just increases the calorie content of the milk a bit. When I'm at home and feeding her myself, we don't have to give her anything extra. We'll meet with the dietitian again right before Thanksgiving to see what kind of progress Lizzie is making.

Apparently I'm making skim milk instead of whole. :) Seriously though, I've nursed all four of the girls now, and all four were a little slow to put on weight the first few weeks, but then after that the older three did fine. I wish we didn't have to give Lizzie the extra formula, but obviously she needs it. I want to do what's best for her.

Lizzie still seems to us to be doing well. Last night she was laughing when Tom tickled her. She's very alert and likes to watch everything going on around her. She especially likes to watch her big sisters, and she follows what the dog and the cat are doing. We will continue to pray for good results on her EEG coming up on Monday!