Andrew's 18 Month Check-up

Andrew will be 18 months on the 11th :(

He had his check-up this morning. I think we found a dr!! I got there over 30 minutes early (I have to drive through Baton Rouge and you never know about traffic through there) and only sat in the waiting room for about 5 minutes. The waiting rooms are well seperated (sick child and well child) and you don't have to walk through one to the get to the other (my complaint about our old clinic). They have weekend hours for sick children - which is nice since we live so far away. Also, I asked if I had to bring all the kids in for check-ups BEFORE they would see them sick (the first one here we went to required it). He said no - as far as he was concerned he had seen one of the kids, they are ALL his patients now. I filled out the paperwork to have all of their records transferred and filled out their new patient paperwork (for all of the them). Caleb and Isaac both have birthdays coming up, which means it is time for their well-child check-ups (but Caleb is working on getting sick right now too).

The dr came in and took time to meet us and learn about Andrew and the family. I had Andrew's records with us and he went through them all while we talked about all of Andrew's many issues. He compared growth charts from the previous clinic with his chart today, shot records, etc. He does not feel as though Andrew ever should have been diagnosed failure to thrive. He agrees there is a big drop between his one month and two month checkups, but he stays on the curve after that drop and other than when he got sick and ended up in the hospital, he never lost weight.

I was explaining the GI issues, and threw in that we really never had much faith in the GI dr we were seeing. I explained that AJ had had allergy testing done and everything came back normal. Told him how AJ could not drink milk or eat anything with high dairy content, but is drinking lactose free milk just fine. He said that Andrew was lactose intolerant. I told him we had thought that and that the GI dr was very adament that he was NOT lactose intolerant. He said we had good reason not to have faith in that dr!

Overall, the dr said that we had a "very healthy monkey" (I did not even tell him we called him Monkey - I guess the fact that he was CONTINUOUSLY climbing on chairs and steps the entire time the dr was in there was enough) and absolutely no reason to be concerned. He is on track to be a thin six to six and a half foot tall young man. He said to continue the Lactaid milk and do what we have been doing as far as the lactose intolerance goes. I did ask if he would outgrow it and he said probably not, but he does not have it as bad as he could because he can have some milk in food, just not a lot of milk. He also put him on some vitamins.

I asked about ending the thumb-sucking. He said there were ways to try, like hot sauce, but basically if we did that he would just cry while he sucks his thumb! He said to just try and deter him by verbally saying things like "Andrew is a big boy and doesn't need to suck his thumb!" We will see!!!

He also got three shots - Hep A, flu and a mix vaccine that has DTAP, Hib and polio). He wasn't too happy about that.

So, his stats are:
Weight 23 pounds 2 ounces
Height 32 1/4 in
Head circumfrence 18 1/2