Friday, April 23, 2010

She obviously takes after her father

We had Gabriela's 12-month check up today. Got the usual good report from her doctor. She is up to 18.5 pounds (10th percentile) and 28.25 inches (15th percentile). So she is growing . . . slowly.

We also got a couple vaccines (prevenar and varicella). And the doctor looked at me weird when I requested that we wait until 15 months for her MMR. I told him we would be more comfortable spacing out her vaccines a little instead of loading up her system with so much at once. He was okay with that, but he obviously thought we were strange. Oh well, probably won't be the last time someone thinks that!

We did have one concern we wanted to discuss with her pediatrician and had been waiting anxiously for her 12-month appointment to bring it up. Every couple of weeks, Gabriela will vomit in a very major way. And usually what she is spewing across the room, into her carseat, or down her father's shirt includes something she ate 8 or 12 hours earlier. There is no common food or activity that triggers it. And it isn't frequent. But it is regular, occurring a couple times per month ever since we started her on solids. All other systems work just fine. She eats very well, she goes poo three times per day every day, she's basically a healthy, happy kid. Whose stomach seems to stop emptying a couple times per month causing her to throw up.

The doctor had a couple theories on what could be happening. He hated to do anything too invasive (upper GI) or start throwing meds out there to try, since it is just an occasional occurrence and since it obviously isn't affecting her overall health. But, he thought it would be good to do an x-ray of her belly just to see if there was some oddity/malformation/something obviously wrong.

We walked down the hall to radiology (our pediatrician's office is in the hospital - super convenient!!) and then back to the doctor.

Turns out little missy has no major problems. But, her gut is packed full of bowels. Yep, she's full of crap. Proving that she might look like her mama, but she's definitely got her dad's genes too! (Just kidding, Dear!)

She already gets a lot of fiber in her daily diet, so the doctor wants us to try giving her a little bulk fiber mixed with her water. (I might try cutting her back to half a banana per day instead of her whole one at breakfast each morning. And maybe add a little more wheat germ too.) Hopefully that will help keep her cleared out and will prove to be the root cause of her stomach back-up and subsequent vomiting.

Her little pot-belly isn't so cute now that we've seen what's in there though!

1 comment:

Katiebell said...

So glad you talked to the doctor about it and got an answer! And that is one cute belly! ; )