skinny and tall- pediasure doc says

[curious&eager]

My little man keeps falling on the weight chart. He's always tall, but he's gone from 75% to 50% to 40% to 25% to 21% and now 5% on his weight, so the doctor is concerned. He doesn't eat a lot of solids, he doesn't want to, and I don't think I make a lot of milk. He drinks whole milk pretty well. He's 15 months now.
Our doctor said I should replace all of his whole milk with pediasure to get extra calories and nutrients in him.
What do you all think about pediasure? I don't know much about it other than it's very expensive, but I'm working on getting WIC to cover it, so that shouldn't be a problem. Is it really healthy?

[wytchywoman]

I have a 17 year old son that is sort of in the same predicament as your little one. He was actually diagnosed with failure to thrive, as a teenager, because no matter how much he ate he just couldn't seem to put on any weight. He is very tall and VERY thin. They ran the gamut of tests and determined that it was probably a calorie thing and suggested we try Ensure 2-3 times a day. It worked. He is just the type of person that needs an insane amount of calories to put weight on. At one point money was really tight and I couldn't afford the Ensure because I was out of work. The dietician and I figured out that making him milk beverages that had 8 oz of whole milk, 2 TBSP of heavy whipping cream and 2 TBSP of strawberry quick had the same calorie count as an Ensure Plus. He continued to put on weight when I switched him to the homemade calorie drinks. I never had to worry about nutrition with him, because he's actually a really good eater and eats a solid, varied, healthy diet. He just needed the additional fats and sugars, so we could do without Ensure and just add extra calories. Pediasure may be a better option because your son isn't eating a balanced diet and probably needs the additional vitamins and nutrients that a meal replacement beverage offers. Other things the dietician recommended was to add calories any way that you could. Offer yogurt or peanut butter when you give him fruit or granola bars to dip, offer dressings to dip veggies, bean dip for tortilla chips, add powdered milk to soup, etc...She said that every little bit adds up so if you can boost what he does eat with additional calories it will help.

[JBaxter]

I would switch to half & half for his milk or add a scoop of toddler formula. I would not replace his meal by offering him pedisure to fill him up. I would offer healthy but higher fat foods ( add pumpkin to pancake mix and butter them well etc)

15 months my 3rd ds lost 3 lbs he had all 4 molars coming in over a 6 wk period of time and his mouth was sore.

Also try making smoothies with full fat yogurt bananas ( or pumpkin/applesauce/honey/) some fruit.

my one cousin was a 10 lb 8oz baby but spent all of his childhood in the 95% for height and 11% for weight

[audy82]

My 3 kids love pediasure and are finally on the charts again. I've tried using whole milk with heavy whipping cream, or coconut cream, very caloric. And adding ovaltine, but they won't take it after drinking the pediasure. If they would I would switch because I think real food is better than processed. My 2 year old and 3 year old drink 1-2 a day and eat 2-3 meals a day with lots of snacks. When i took them off the pediasure for 3 months they all fell off the charts!

[ellegoat]

Carnation Instant Breakfast is a cheaper, but nutritionally equivalent, option.

Pediasure is certainly more caloric and nutrient dense, but I did notice that it was so filling that my LO would often replace food with Pediasure rather than supplement food with Pediasure. So I would try it out, but hold off on giving it until after he's eaten or for a snack so he can still build up an appetite for real food.

It's also very sweet, so you need to pay more attention to dental care.

There are several different flavors, so if one flavor doesn't work out you could also try another.

But, I wouldn't focus just on Pediasure to get calories. Also try adding oils and butters and creams to his solid foods.

[flightgoddess]

If you want to control the sugar aspect (pediasure has sugar to make it taste better) then do the whole milk plus cream or coconut cream, then you won't need to 'flavor' it.

[CrunchyChristianMama]

Personally, I would stay away from it. I just don't think it's healthy at all. I would much rather add lots of butter and fattier milk to a child's diet than processed foods.

I would try putting lots of butter on any veggies or grains he eats and try making smoothies with coconut milk, coconut oil, and fruit.

[curious&eager]

Yeah, I was concerned about the sugar and the processedness (like my new word). But, he liked his first bottle. Today, he ate a small slice of raisin bread for breakfast and almost nothing for lunch, a few bites of a sandwich and only because I put them in his mouth.

A typical meal for him averages from between 5 grapes to 10 bites of food. He's just not interested in stopping for food. If he can carry it with him and play, he may eat more, but it takes longer, makes a mess, and he might get distracted and still not eat.

But, I am a little concerned because he used to have tons of energy and now he seems to have less. He wants me to hold him most of the time at the playground for example when he used to run and climb up a storm. He'll still play, just not as much.

JBaxter- yes, he's been teething. He just cut 6 teeth in the past month. I'm sure that plays into his lost weight too. And maybe that's all this is, teeth hurting too much to eat and play. I've put the gel on his gums and given him Tylenol at times, but there is only so much Tylenol you can do in a month of teething and I'm not sure how much that Hyland's teething gel really works although little man does like it's taste.

[KLM99]

Originally Posted by Evie's Mama

Personally, I would stay away from it. I just don't think it's healthy at all. I would much rather add lots of butter and fattier milk to a child's diet than processed foods.

I would try putting lots of butter on any veggies or grains he eats and try making smoothies with coconut milk, coconut oil, and fruit.

Agreed - there's got to be more natural, healthier ways to add more calories than fake pediasure. Butter, cheese, avocados, peanut (or sunflower) butter, etc.

[curious&eager]

Oh, and I do think he's missing out on nutrition too with his pickyness. So, it's not just the calories. If it's not sometimes he loves, he won't go near it. So, he has a diet of mainly cheese, grapes, strawberries, bread, pasta and chicken. Finally he will eat a carrot again. I'm happy about that one.

[Marsupialmom]

If he has no underlying illnesses I wouldn't do it.

My kids were/are in the 95% for height and 5% for weight. It is genetics.

We had low weights growing up and this giving extra calories actually lead to our current health issues. My sister and I are obese. My brother has horrible cholesterol even though he is still underweight.

[JMJ]

Is your pediatrician using the WHO charts for breastfed babies? Breastfed babies gain weight quickly at the beginning and then slow down their weight gain. Formula-fed babies gain weight more slowly but continue to gain weight more quickly than breastfed babies for a longer period of time. If you plot a breastfed baby on a chart with mostly formula-fed babies, it will look like they are constantly losing percentile points when they're really doing exactly what their bodies are supposed to be doing.

When DD was 1 month old, she was in the 95% on the chart her pediatrician was using. By 15 months, she was down around 25%. When I charted her weight on the WHO charts, she was between 50% and 75% the whole way. Don't let your pediatrician bully you into interventions if your son is really growing normally.

[Latte Mama]

Pediasure is crap. The first 2 ingredients are water and sugar. It's just easy for the doctor to prescribe.

I'd make my own shakes/smoothies. Your choice of milk, quality fat, some fruit or peanut butter, maybe some flaxseed, really anything tasty and nutritious you can think of.

Pediasure is basically milk, fat, sugar, flavoring, and added vitamins/minerals. So much better to do it yourself.

[alfabetsoup]

DD2 was 30% for height and 2% for weight at 17mo, so not quite as skinny as your DS but you could see all her little bones and she was just tiny. I made every snack into a mini meal, so she had no filler snacks (cheerios, goldfish) and was having about 6 meals a day. Breakfast was oatmeal or other cereal, toast, fruit, juice. Snacks were either small sandwiches (pb or nutella but she has no allergies), home made muffins/cookies/banana bread, or fruit. Lunch--pasta with cheese sauce, scrambled eggs, dinner leftovers. Another snack midafternoon then a dinner similar to lunch, usually with meat. And always dessert, fruit cobbler with cream poured on, ice cream, high fat yogurt & banana...

Did she eat it all? Heck no. But I kept offering and offering and offering and she ate enough to gain some weight. She's 2y2mo now and is very petite (we're a petite family) but looks healthy and you can't see the bones any more!

I always find it helps if I sit down and eat with my kids. They also prefer a roast dinner to just about anything else and always have even when they were your DS's age. It's really easy to roast a few chicken pieces or bit of salmon, mash a potato and boil some broccoli. That and homemade mac n cheese are my go-to meals when they start looking weedy.

If you kept at it for a week and he wasn't any more interested in eating I'd try the pediasure, but if you can get him eating real food it would be better than pediasure.

[blessedwithboys]

Originally Posted by Latte Mama

Pediasure is crap. The first 2 ingredients are water and sugar. It's just easy for the doctor to prescribe.

I'd make my own shakes/smoothies. Your choice of milk, quality fat, some fruit or peanut butter, maybe some flaxseed, really anything tasty and nutritious you can think of.

Pediasure is basically milk, fat, sugar, flavoring, and added vitamins/minerals. So much better to do it yourself.

This exactly. Crap, garbage, unhealthy stuff.

Spirutein makes a decent tasting kids shake powder, but it's got soy in it. I don't use it, I use their whey varieties for mornings when my kids oversleep and don't have time for a real meal before school. The whey one isnt' marketed for kids, but mine are 8 and 16, so I figure it's ok.

You could try raw milk instead of the dead garbage sold in grocery stores. Or any other all-natural meal replacement sold in health food stores. They even have an organic RTD one now, but honestly, at that age my ds1 was average height and only about 20# and I was threatened by the ped with a call to CPS, but he was just a skinny skinny kid. Same now with ds2, except this ped did make the call.

If you feel like your LO just isn't himself lately, a call to your CP might be in order. Otherwise, I feel like if a child is healthy and just slim, good for them!

ETA: I forgot to say that I did give my ds1 Pediasure for a short while around this age, but it just made him eat even less. And even at 16 he's a picky eater. We have sort of figured out that it's a sensory thing. You may wish to look into that for your LO if you feel it could be an issue.

[nukuspot]

DD is 95th percentile for height and head, but dropped to only 15th for weight at her recent 18 mo WBV. She had been about 50th, then dropped to 25th, now 15th. However the pedi said no call for alarm since her head and height are growing just fine and well above average. Some babies are just supposed to be tall and skinny, perhaps?

[sapphire_chan]

Originally Posted by curious&eager

. He wants me to hold him most of the time at the playground for example when he used to run and climb up a storm. He'll still play, just not as much.

Will he eat if you feed him bites while he's interested in other things?

I mean, clearly you want to still have meals where he does eating on purpose, but for getting more calories into him through the day it might help.

[Kmama2]

I have a super small baby myself...
1 % for weight and 5 % for height at 12 months but he eats a ton of food and has always been small.
Your babe has def been falling in %.... have they checked his thyroid??
I myself do the add fat to everything approach... full fat yogurt, raw whole milk, butter olive oil, flax seed oil, coconut oil... etc.

[curious&eager]

JMJ- I do have to replot it on a WHO chart. I have been a bit lazy because the weights are in kilos on the chart I found or else I would have done it already and I'm trying to find all of his weights/heights from my papers. Thanks for the suggestion. It would be totally cool to see that he's normal. He just filled out nicely on breastmilk and now I would say he's a normal skinny size. We're a skinny family, but we're short. I have no idea why he's tall, but that's where his calories are going. His head has always been in the 90% and now it's 20% but, I really think the nurse just mismeasured this time. We just changed doctors so I didn't have my records to justify asking her to measure it again.

sapphire_chan- yes, he'll eat if I feed him bites while he's playing. I usually seek in some extra yogurt this way. But, the only sign he knows is all done and he uses it a lot and quickly when it comes to food.

blessedwithboys & Latte Mama- that's exactly what I was thinking when I saw it's mainly sugar and tastes like sugar. I'd rather make my own. He does like the smoothies that I do make.

alfabetsoup "start looking weedy"- love your comment, very cute.

[DevaMajka]

My ds started out high on the %iles chart (I think 90%ile for both height and weight when he was born). At his 12 mos check, he was 95%ile for height and 20%ile for weight- on the CDC chart. On the WHO chart he was 50%ile for weight. That's still pretty skinny for his height, but it's not as big of a difference. The doctor didn't actually say anything about his weight- I checked the charts myself. He's super duper active, and has been for a long time.

As far as pediasure, I don't think I would until after I tried other high fat stuff- like others said, even adding half and half to milk, avocados, cheese, butter, stuff like that. Or maybe you could try doing pediasure once a day, and try the other high fat options too. That way, your ds wouldn't become too attached to the pediasure, kwim?