When our twins turned 6 months, it was obvious that they were very small for their age. It really hit me when I was at a reunion with a group of my Bradley students. Although the babies were significantly younger than my girls, they all seemed to be as big or bigger than the twins.
At our 6 month well baby visit, the doctor expressed a major concern regarding the twins' size. Not only were they not on the growth chart, they were nowhere near the chart. When he plotted their stats from birth, he confirmed what I had suspected. They had not shown much growth for about 2 months. All 4 of my girls have been on the small side as babies, but the older 2 had always grown steadily at their own rate. The fact that my babies were not on the growth chart was really not a concern of mine, it was the fact that they had plateaued. He suggested that I increase their calories as much as possible.
I had to bring the babies back frequently for weight checks and the doctor started to push formula supplementation. He also recommended that we meet with a Pediatric Nutritionist. After some questioning on my part, the doctor informed me that it is not unusual for the specialist to hospitalize babies for up to a week for tests, observation, and assurance that the babies maintain a high calorie diet. I was beside myself. I couldn't help but to feel like somehow I was failing my babies. Talk of hospitalizing the twins seemed so extreme and entirely unnecessary. Although they were small, they were healthy babies. I agreed that changes needed to be made, but I was determined to try fattening them up on my own before moving to such extreme measures.
For the next several weeks, our nutrition became a huge focus. I realized that in the chaos of caring for 4 small children all day, my nutrition had suffered tremendously. I was on an extremely strict diet due to the twins' allergies (that will have to be another post). While removing the allergens from my diet was a good thing, I hadn't quite mastered what I should be eating to replace those calories. So step one was to build up my calorie intake! Next step, I build up my milk supply. Nursing the babies became a huge focus of my life! I would nurse them together and when they lost interest they would both switch breasts and nurse a little more. Then, I nursed them individually, and to my surprise, they would nurse even longer. It was more than a full time job, but it was working. The babies were gaining weight, but the doctor still wanted to see more growth.
We had been letting the babies try solids here and there, but by 7 months we started them on solids on a regular basis. This was earlier than I had planned, but they were ready. They took to eating solids like ducks in water. They couldn't get enough. Sweet potatoes and applesauce were big favorites. This is what feeding time looked like for a long time: Nurse the babies, feed them solids, and then nurse them again to top them off. They started to gain more than an ounce a day! The doctor was so happy that he never mentioned formula again. In fact, I think he took notes on what it was that I had been doing.
At 13 months old, they actually made it onto the growth chart for height and head circumference. The most important fact is that the graph demonstrated growth at a very steady rate. Let me tell you, if I knew how to do back flips and cartwheels, I would have been doing them all the way out of our last doctor's visit.
