15 Month Well Baby Exam

We had Sasha's routine 15 Month Well Baby Exam on Tuesday.

In her past exams, she usually started crying the moment she sees the nurse. The nurse at the pediatrician's office is the same nurse she sees every visit from the time she was a week old onward, so she recognizes her as bad news. This time, Sasha didn't cry immediately upon seeing her and was mostly cordial at first. We stripped her down to her diaper and she was amused with that. She likes to play with her belly button, so any time she's got no shirt on, she's a happy belly-button picking girl. Sasha also found the scale in the exam room to be a fun toy. She liked to step on and off of it like it was a fun wobbly step. When the nurse came back in the room, Sasha happily stepped on the scale for her. The nurse seemed confused at the weight, 19lbs, and decided to try to weigh Sasha on the scale in the other exam room. That other scale is the scale Sasha had always been weighed on in previous visits and was the baby scale... you know the kind that weighs in pounds and ounces and sits on a tabletop.
The baby scale said Sasha weighed 18lbs 8oz. This was concerning. At her 12 month exam, Sasha weighed 18lbs 14oz. This meant she lost weight instead of a gain. Not good. Sasha doesn't seem to have gained much weight since she was 9 months old.
I've had a difficult time transitioning Sasha to solids, as I've mentioned in previous posts. She kept refusing to eat. Only in the last three weeks has Sasha shown even the slightest interest in solid foods. So I wasn't surprised at the low weight but I wasn't expecting a weight loss.

The nurse measured Sasha's height, and she did gain an inch of height. She is now 30 inches long. Sasha protested the height measurement process by screaming and crying.
The nurse left and the doctor came in the room. He was very upset about the weight loss and about Sasha's weight. According to his growth charts, Sasha is now below the third percentile in weight for her age. He kept saying "No this is not good". He started insisting that I wean Sasha from breastfeeding and implied that nursing is no longer a good source of nutrition for a toddler after a year of age, and that nursing ruins her appetite. I'm not sure what to think of his statement, but I gues that's for another post. He said that Sasha is malnourished, that we were retarding her brain development, and kept saying "This is not good".

Usually, the next pediatric exam wouldn't be until 18 months, but he wants to see her in one month to do a more thorough evaluation of her weight and nutritional status. He is going to do some bloodwork on her at that exam to check if she is anemic or if she has any malnutritional deficiencies.

The doctor continued his examination, under much protest from Sasha. He is very thorough in his examinations. He checked her abdomen, bones, joints, fontanelle status, and had us make her walk so he could observe her gait. All that was good.

They wanted to administer two shots at this visit, the mmr shot, and the chicken pox vaccination. The MMR shot has my husband nervous, with all the accusations of links to autism, but we did allow her to receive the shot. I refused the chicken pox vaccine. I suppose I could write a separate post on that but it is not required by law and I would prefer she get the chicken pox instead of the vaccine.

After the shots, the visit was complete. Sasha was quite mad at that mmr shot. I know it hurt. We set up an appointment for one month from now, and for her 18 month well baby exam. We shall see how her weight is at her evaluation next month.