gina, over what period of time did she drop in the percentile rank?  as good as she sounds like she is doing, she may just be small and it took a little while for her body to find it's zone.

thanks for resonding!  christine, i was hoping you would 'weigh in'  on the FTT...she was 25th% at her 6 mos, then 5th% at her 9 mos.  dan's g-ma was only 4' 11", my mom is only 5', i'm only 5' 2" and one hundred # and some change...it really fires me up when i hear a doc say she's got some 'growth issues'.  also, riley was only 25th% until he was almost three.  he didn't drop percentiles, but he definitely takes after dan...very tall and SOLID.  what do you think?

good to see you too, ann marie!  how are the boys?  i can't believe how old everyones' kids seem to me!  time marches on but i guess i still think these kids should be babies, lol!

Hi Gina,

Hi Gina,

First off, wow and hats off to you for continuing to breastfeed on the diet you are on. I did a very restricted diet and it is so difficult! I haven't dealt with the lower end of the growth chart like you describe, but my first thought is that someone has to be small, there is a spectrum for a reason, and that's because some people are big, medium and small. If she seems to be otherwise thriving, then it doesn't seem to be such a worry?-- especially if you and your family are shorter than some? Also, I just want to mention this, it's been on my mind because we are dealing with a yeast/thrush infection but I have a friend whose daughter was on prevacid, VERY restricted diet and they still couldn't figure out what was going on and she wasn't sleeping, etc. The mother did her own research and basically decided maybe the baby had a yeast overgrowth in her gi tract. She began giving her Florastor-- a probiotic that does have some lactace in it (I'm not sure if that means traces of dairy or what, but I have some and it's on teh ingrediant list) anyways, giving that for the long term did the trick for her daughter. It turns out she was reacting to foods that the yeast would feed on, dairy, fruits high in sugar, breads, etc. Not to throw something completely out there at you, but it's just something to htink about. The daughter is MSPI but reacted to so many other foods that they had her on gluten/dairy/soy free diets, etc. and once the yeast problem was in balance she was able to give her bread although she still doesn't get dairy and is two and half years old. Just to clarify this all began when she was an infant and now she's 2.5 years old. My friend says she sleeps like a dream when she gets her prevacid, her probiotic and the diet is correct. It was only when she felt good enough to sleep that she showed signs of being a "good sleeper."

In my own situation, my ds couldn't have dairy, soy or gluten or beef-- has terrible reflux nad didn't sleep for more than two hours at a stretch until around 18 months old.   Sleep was our biggest challenge and nothing seemed to work until we got all the cogs in the wheel, our last piece of the puzzle was removing gluten from our diets (when he was 17 months old), along with doing reflux meds (high healthy doses too) and probiotics. This past fall we were able to give him beef (at age four) and we are doing wheat now, beginning about six weeks ago. He's okay, although I think his reflux has increased a bit, but he is sleeping through the night and seems generally normal. And he LOVES bread. haha. We're still dairy free and oh, he's been having soy since about age 2.5 or 3. I nursed him until age two. When he began solids he was still in your situation-- we didn't have everything figured out with food, meds, reflux and i took him off solids in order to keep things simpler as I tried to figure out what was causing problems. He began solids for real about age 10 or 11 months and even though for living here that's very late, he was fine with it. That way i could strictly control my diet and his wasn't a factor. He was in the 50% for growth, though, so I know that's a different ball game. Another thought I have for you is are you trying any sort of probiotics with her? Are enzymes the same as probiotics? Maybe I don't have the terminology right, but we used probiotics and that seemed to help general gi discomfort. I used Nature's Way primadophilus for children, it's a powder, you can mix it with water, breastmilk or just probably let them suck it off your finger (wet your finger first)-- but that was a help to us as well. I believe it's dairy and soy free, it needs to be refrigerated, I buy it at Whole Foods. I just bought it again to use with my infant daughter who's got reflux, MSPI and gi issues. I hope things improve and I hope you begin to have luck with more foods and more sleep!

OT: christine: you play the piano, too??!!! you never cease to amaze me!

Edited by hellbennt - 13 March 2009 at 7:55am