Hindsight

I've been going through a lot of my old pictures lately and boy, was I surprised at what I discovered! I was absolutely flabbergasted at how much weight Clayton put on after his new diet kicked in--and I've basically been feeling guilty ever since! How could we not have seen how heavy he was getting?! I guess we were just so glad to find a GI doctor that could make him grow that we were oblivious to the predicament we were putting both him and us in. It's taken quite some time for him to actually grow length wise and slim up instead of grow out . . .and we did ourselves no favors since he is totally dependent on us for mobility! Here he is in the NICU (August 2003) just a couple of days old (1 lb, 8 oz). He's so skinny, you can count his little ribs. And here he is at almost a week old--still the preemie skinny:

This pic was taken some time in late 2004 here at home. He weighed around 12 lbs for several months:



And then in February 2005, we finally started seeing the new doc and started the new feeding regiment. And when she said she could "get a rock to grow if you feed it enough of the right stuff," she wasn't kidding! You can see by this pic in July 2005, he was finally starting to get his baby fat:

And then this next one bothers me big time (July 2006). He is always beautiful, but how could we not recognize how chubby he was??? I mean, when I look at this pic, I think he looks sick in the total opposite way that he was in the beginning. And we never even realized it! It didn't help that he had his dad's shorty genes either! He ended up getting to the 95th percentile in weight while still in the negative percentiles on height. Quite the little chunk--no wonder he was slow to make gains in physical therapy . . . I can't believe how hard we made it on him and that we didn't recognize it enough to say a big NO to the doctor on increasing his calories anymore. She has since told me she likes to err on the side of a heavy baby, but I can't say I would always agree with that position. For a child who gets no "regular" excercise, and who is totally dependent on others for mobility; it just seems natural to err on the lighter side of weight. But hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, and like I said earlier, we were just so glad to see him grow out of that preemie look that we didn't even notice! (Oh, and I do have to say that those big, beautiful eyes still stand out!)

He finally started slimming up (or stretching out you might say) in 2007. This one was in September:

And in July 2008:

He's been on the same calorie intake for three years. Which translates to a big-time diet for his age. And while his weight has finally leveled off (he's been at or around fourty pounds for at least a year now), he continues to grow taller and his legs are getting longer and longer. Definitely a better way to grow in my opinion! Here he is in February of this year, all healthy little boy and baby no more . . .