I have been very interested to read everyone's comments about the issue of
growth rates, all emphasizing the importance of looking at the child and not
a chart, and also of looking at the child's overall health history.  I hope
a way is found to convince the family's insurance company to cover this
healthy, but small, baby.

I always wonder how many parents have their self-confidence shaken by this
kind of tunnel vision concerning a child's weight.  My daughter, Julia, was
a full-term baby, born to fairly large parents, but with a diaphragmatic
hernia.  Although the hernia repair went extremely well, she did not grow
and develop.  She was a classic FTT.  After having lay in a hospital bed for
her first four months of life, with parents who barely looked at her (having
emotionally withdrawn from her, when they learned, at the end of the second
trimester, that she would be born with a potentially fatal condition), being
fed through a gastrostomy, she was barely seven pounds.  When I finally got
her, at six months, she was just over nine pounds.  Five weeks later, I took
her to our AFB peditrician, who freaked out over the fact that she was not
quite 12 pounds, chastized me for not bringing her to him sooner, and was
threatening to hospitalize her and put her on parenteral nutrition. After
repeating myself several times, I finally got it through to him that she had
gained two and a half pounds in the five weeks I'd had her.

Julia was my fourth baby and I was quite confident in my ability to raise
babies by this time.  However, this doc's attitude shook me up, despite my
confidence in my mothering abilities and satisfaction with Julia's progress.
  The scarey part, I think, is that a young, inexperienced, timid, mother
could have been very shaken up by this kind of thing.  In fact, Julia's
young birth parents' lack of confidence in their abilities to care for her
adequately was the reason that she was placed for adoption.  They were
married and it was a planned pregnancy.  I am sure that there aren't many
situations where it goes so far as a child being placed for adoption, but I
think there are many where inappropriate concern over weight gain is hard on
parent's self-confidence, which certainly does no favors for the child.

Darillyn Starr



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