when do you decide to supplement?

[mommy2maya]

Not formula supplementation, as Audrey will be 2 in April. She is still nursing, just not a great eater, at all. She started solids late, had a diagnosis of dysphagia, but no documented aspiration, though some pooling with liquids. Anyway, she was doing great on the charts, 50% height/weight til 9m, then dropped down to between 5-10% by the time she was 15m. She has stayed about the same percentile since then. She has been in feeding therapy since 15m, though we are now finished up since she has caught up physically eating, now she just doesn't take in enough quantity.

Anyway, we are having a nutritional consult on Tuesday, thru early intervention. I had a phone consult today, a quick history, before our appt. He asked if we were doing any supplementation, such as pediasure. It was also suggested a few weeks ago by a new therapist we saw, to take the pressure off of her intake.

I guess my biggest question is, when do you decide to supplement? She is equal percentiles height/weight, though her head is nearly off of the charts. My ds is also small, but my other girls are both 90-95% for their height. Ds started off big too, and dropped down. Neither ds or Audrey have the best guts- he often complains of stomach aches, has loose stinky stools as a regularity, both also have nearly always runny noses. He also eats very little quantity.

So, when do you decide to supplement or that they are just small?

[jennabean]

My son was not the best nurser and when he started solids it was touch and go for the looongest time, he hated "baby" food but had a strong gag reflex for "real" food... at about a year old I finally made the decision to add pediasure to his diet and for me (and for him) it was a good decision.

It took soooo much pressure off of meals and nursing and he loved it... for us it just made life easier. I wanted a more 'natural' type of pediasure so we tried the Baby's Only but he didn't like it so we just stuck to the vanilla pediasure with fiber...

He's now 21 months old and is a hearty, hearty eater and his gag reflex is almost gone and he now prefers either water or organic whole milk so we've phased out pediasure.

I will say my son was never ON a chart, diagnosed with failure to thrive, etc. etc. but I always maintained that he WAS following his own curve... he's now @ the 25% or so for weight and as much as I HATE The Charts, I do feel a certain sense of relief not having to fight that battle and have that worry.

I'd say try it. If it works for you and your family, fabulous. If not you can always try something else... are smoothies an option? My son LOVES our homemade smoothies and that might be a way to add some calories and nutrition as well.

Best of luck to you all, I hope things go well