Zoe's growth check-up

On August 5th, I took Zoe in for her her growth check up at the endocrinologist. We go in every 3 months now to get her measured and weighed to see how the progress is going.

Here is her progress so far:

Start 2/5/10: 21lbs. and 32.8 inches

3 months 5/5/10: 22.5lbs. and 34.1 inches

Now 8/5/10: 23lbs. and 34.9 inches

As you can see, Zoe didn't grow very much since May. She grew a lot in the first three months on growth hormone therapy and the doctor expected her to have grown a lot again since she has so much catching up to do.

So we talked a little bit about ways to increase Zoe's calories. That's nothing really new to us, she gets to eat pretty much what any kid wants to eat like ice cream and cookies. I really don't want to clog Zoe's arteries though by the time she gets to kindergarten so I try hard to get her to eat good fats like bananas, peanut butter, and avocados. Luckily, she likes all three of those things. She's really good at eating fruits and veggies....so it makes it a little easier to hand over cookies and ice cream cones. Also, you know when your kids won't eat their dinner, so to teach them a lesson you just send them to bed hungry? That's not an option for us. Zoe NEEDS the calories and she NEEDS the full stomach to help her sleep. So dinner time gets interesting (and I might get a little desperate) sometimes.

We also talked about Zoe's sleep habits. I know a lot of kids Zoe's age who don't take naps any more. But the growth hormones work best when Zoe sleeps so we still do naps every day AND try to get Zoe to sleep 12 hours at night. Her sleep is SO important. The problem is, Zoe doesn't want to sleep that much any more. She has better things to do, right?! I always put Zoe down for a nap in the afternoon. Sometimes she falls asleep, sometimes she doesn't. And we usually have Zoe in bed by 8:00pm but lately she doesn't fall asleep until 9:00 or 10:00. She just lays in bed talking to herself for TWO HOURS sometimes! The doctor suggested having Zoe drink a whole cup of milk before going to bed (we had stopped doing that when we started potty training) so that she has a full stomach (also, milk contains tryptophan which makes you tired). So we've been doing that and it seems to be working. The one problem is that Zoe's pull-up is F-U-L-L in the morning. Oh well, we'll deal with that later.

The last thing we talked about with the doctor is increasing her daily dosage of growth hormones. The doctor wanted us to increase Zoe's dosage by .025ML a day. That's not very much. But it'll be interesting to see what kind of an impact it makes!

Zoe is still taking the shots pretty well. She hated getting it on her stomach so much that we finally stopped doing it there. Now we rotated between her butt and leg. We still haven't tried doing it in her arms...they are just too dang skinny.

Our next appointment is November 4th!