Katie Update

It's been a while so I thought a long update was in order. I'm always thinking of things I should blog about during the day but once I have some time all I want to so is go to bed and get some sleep. After 6 months of insomnia I can't get enough sleep, it's great!

Feeding is definitely the new "F" word in this house these past two years. I have so many grey hairs from the hours that we spend feeding Katie. (my mom feeds Katie lunch everyday...yes everyday, and yes I'm spoiled.) She was doing so well and even gained some fantastic weight, bringing her up to 22 pounds a month ago. TWENTY-TWO pounds! She is almost back on the charts. She's at the 2nd percentile and it takes the 3rd percentile to officially be "on" the charts.

Then...

She started getting really cranky and very tired after only being awake for an hour in the mornings. She was super cranky. I also noticed that her little nails were getting pretty brittle and were chipping on the edges. Did I mention CRANKY?!

Anyway, after some online research I was convinced that her iron was low. Very low from what I read. After requesting some blood work from her Pediatrician, it was confirmed (her Ferritin came back at 3...it should be 11-30) and she was put on enough iron supplements for a water buffalo. Seriously, 45mg broken up into 3 daily doses. The toxicity levels for adults is 40mg a day. It's crazy. I know what iron supplements can do to your stomach because my prenatal vitamins gave me a 9 months stomach ache. We started with Fer-n-sol drops and her eating went downhill fast. I did some more research and found a supplement called Floridix that is supposed to mimic natural iron in food. It was a bit better, but we're still battling bad eating.

If we cut back the iron dose for a day her eating picks up right away but her energy level drops dramatically. If I keep the iron dose high, she stops eating. We just can't win. We're now trying her at 2/3 dose and are just hoping that she doesn't lose all of the new weight we worked so hard for her to gain. When she's taking the iron, she is totally back to being herself. Go, go, go all the time and lots of giggle fits.

I'm just hoping we can get enough into her over the next 2 months, before she needs to be rechecked, to bring it up into the normal, healthy range. Ugh.

Anyway, on to some great news. Katie has been learning new words everyday. I'm so excited by this new development I can barely stand it. I was so worried about her speech and to see some progress gives me so much hope for her future. She's gone from 6-7 words just two months ago to over 30 in two months. She's a quirky girl. She whispers anything that starts with the letters "P" and "T" and says "B" words really loud. Her favorites at the moments are "Bad", "Banana", "Owww" (owl) and "Noa" (no). We hear a lot of "Noa" these days and we couldn't be happier.

She's really "into" balloons, oranges and balls at the moment. She points and says "Peees" when she sees them at the grocery store. We bring them home and she carries them around like dolls, giving them a hundred kisses throughout the day. She points out any little mark on them and kisses it better. It's adorable. She insists that grapefruit are also oranges and gets indignant if we call them anything other than an "orange". She spends most of her playtime in her ball-pit tent, flipping through books and running around like a maniac.

She's been playing lots of new games on our iPhones. She has now mastered most of the toddler quiz games. She has her letters, shapes and colors down cold and is now working on a new memory game. It has face-down cards like the traditional memory game, but this one has pictures of fruit. Fruit = oranges. She's a happy girl.

I'll be back with more updates shortly. I have to get some sleep. Sleeeeeeep.