Visit to the GI

I took Zoe to see the GI (Gastroenterologist) doctor this past week. It was mostly a visit just to get his opinion on Zoe's lack of appetite (without medication) and the reflux that she still has. He was really surprised when I told him that the Periactin is working so well for her appetite. He said that he rarely has seen it help anybody. Well that's good news for us. And he was impressed that the very small dosage of Zantac that Zoe gets (.5mL morning and night) helps with the reflux so well. He was also impressed with how healthy Zoe looks and pretty much told me just to keep doing whatever it is we're doing...because it's working.

So what is it that we're doing? Feeding her whatever she'll eat--ALL DAY LONG. I offer her about 3-4 bottles a day (she usually will take about 2 of them). She constantly has a cup within arms reach with either water or milk in it. ***I know that babies don't need to drink water, but we give her cups of water for 2 reasons: 1)dehydration has always been a concern because of the lack of milk that she drinks and 2)it is our effort to help her get better at drinking from a cup instead of a bottle.*** Anyways, I also am always offering her bread, Cheerios, cookies, crackers, whatever fruit is handy, some of whatever I'm eating, plus her 3 big meals a day. She LOVES to eat now! It's amazing!

So the doctor said to just keep doing this and that we can add regular (cow's) milk into her diet. We tried it the other night and she seemed to really like it. So we're going to finish the formula that we have on hand and move to regular milk only. Cool.

The doctor reminded us how lucky we are because a lot of the kids with Russell-Silver Syndrome deal with feeding tubes and other things that Zoe seems to be doing okay without. We do know that we're really lucky. Mike's sister, Krista, said that she'd rather have to deal with Russell-Silver Syndrome than what she has: Russell Stover Syndrome. :)