nutrition

Rhys's nutritionist came to see him this weekend. If you are thinking to yourself "Man, Rhys has a lot of appointments" you'd be right on! In addition to many others, he has been followed by a nutritionist since we were discharged from the NICU to ensure his diet is sufficient to meet his calorie needs for proper growth. Until we recently cut out the cereal, and really pushed the spoon/self-feeding, Rhys had been gaining weight at a rate faster than would be expected. Since then he's pretty much plateaued and has only gained about a half pound in the last two months. You'd expect this from an active 15-month old, however Rhys isn't moving around so much and isn't burning the calories his typical term counterpart is. Despite the minimal weight gain Rhys grew a bit more than an inch in one month, which bumped his height to the 50th percentile for his adjusted age (and as previously mentioned, to the 5th-10th percentile for his actual age). The nutritionist was quite stunned at this little growth spurt. Obviously Rhys is getting the nutrition he needs, else he would be growing at all, so she wasn't too concerned with his lack of weight gain. Like most of the others Rhys sees, the nutritionist treats him like a regular kid (while keeping in mind that yes he was extremely premature), and isn't one to automatically assume his prematurity is causing a particular issue. So, we will continue to watch the weight gain, and in the mean time we are going to transition from formula to Pediasure. Oh boy. The greatest problem I see with this change is that Rhys refuses to take his milk at a temperature less than really warm, no matter how hungry he is. Luke warm, room temperate, ice cold, it doesn't matter... he refuses it all. I just can't see myself heating Pediasure. This would be much easier if he could use his honey bear cup and distinguish it from the bottle, but alas that is not the case.