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!

Still Sick

Nolan's ear is looking better, but his fever keeps going up. It was being kept down to 102 on Tylenol, but he's been on strong antibiotics since Tuesday and this bug keeps getting worse instead of better!

Our pediatrician's office is open on Saturday mornings, so I took him in for a check to make sure nothing more serious is going on with the little fellow. His fever was 102.5, so they gave him some Motrin on top of the Tylenol to see if it would come down. They also took some blood to make sure it wasn't a bacterial infection that the antibiotic wasn't fighting.

The good news is that he doesn't have a serious bacterial infection, but there is a very nasty virus at play. He still has bronchitis and his fever is difficult to manage. We just have to wait a few days until his body fights off the infection. We also need to finish the antibiotic (which was prescribed for the ear infection). His ear is clear now and the rupture is healing, which is good news. We have an appointment with the ENT on December 1 to get the all-clear to finish his audiological testing.

The bad news? He's severely anemic. This was surprising since his CBC at his one year old checkup showed no anemia. He's far below the normal weight curve (18 pounds, 15 ounces at 15 months of age). He only eats a small amount of food, and is rather picky at the same time. We were sent off to get some liquid vitamins with iron to help him build up his red blood cell count.

Our current medical arsenal now includes amoxicillin, Tylenol/Motrin alternating every four hours, Ciprodex (eardrops), and now liquid vitamins that smell like rusty nails. His fever is back up to 102 F even with the Motrin, so I really hope he beats this thing soon!