Monday, December 15, 2008

15 Month Well Baby Visit


We took a little trip to the pediatrician for Nolan's 15 month well-baby visit today. I went in with a few concerns, including his persistent head lag, anemia, and low weight. The visit was a good one, and I walked out with one less worry!

Nolan's anemia is NOT iron deficient anemia. When they ran his CBC during the last bout of illness, the blood count showed a normal MCV (mean corpuscular volume) and a low hemoglobin count. This means there was anemia, but not due to iron deficiency. The pediatrician re-checked his blood counts today and everything was normal. The running theory is that the virus he had caused some acute anemia, which has since resolved. This is great, because we can stop the iron supplementation. No more rusty-nail flavored vitamins!

He still has the head lag, but the pediatrician isn't worried since he is walking, running, and doing everything else a 15 month old boy should be doing. I'll mention it to the ENT when we see her on the 14th, just to see what she thinks. It still bothers me a little, because it is something that shouldn't be there. It's probably just a quirk of Nolan's, but I want to make sure.

He's 31 inches long, which is great! He's growing well (in height) and his head circumference is fine. He is still below the 3rd percentile for weight, at 19 pounds, 5 ounces. He's almost sixteen months old, so he's a little guy! The lack of catch-up growth is also attributed to the recent virus.

As Nolan doesn't tolerate illnesses well (Matthew's cold was severe bronchitis to Nolan), we opted for the flu shot. If we can head off any more infections, I'm all for it. He also got his scheduled chicken pox injection and MMR. Our little guy has two sore arms and one sore leg today!

We don't see the pediatrician again until March, so pending illness our doctor visits should decrease over the winter. That makes me one happy mama!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Leah-

I have a Nolan also :) Emily was always growing (somewhat) in height, but never in weight. They did some wacky bloodwork early on, just to be sure, but never showed anything. She also had mild anemia, no known cause.

She's great now :)

Hang in there,
Melissa

Loudest Mom said...

Hi Leah-

The note above was me :) Delaney's friend was using my computer, and must have a google account. I wasn't paying attention to the fact that it wasn't my normal profile-LOL.

Sorry :)

tammy said...

We have a "Nolan" too! I don't think Kailyn made it to 20 lbs until after 18 months! And still today, at 8 years old, she's just at 40 lbs!

I'm glad to hear the household is healthy again and that this visit was a "well" visit! Aiden has the whole head lag going on, we get PT through our ECI program, but he has weak gross motor skills too. Hope you all are staying warm!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Good news, Leah :0)

I have two that practically fell off the growth charts. We did some "food layering" (I think I already mentioned that to you) and they are still small.

So, they are small.

As long as they're hitting their developmental milestones, no worries :0)

My 12-year old still doesn't weigh 70 lbs. Go figure.

Julie