Wing Nut is Gaining Weight!

For the first time in close to 2 years my 9 year old, Failure to Thrive Wing Nut has gained weight! And I am over the moon, super excited about it! He has been on periactin for the past 10 days and his appetite has been increasing every day it seems. For the most part, as long as I am putting food in front of him, he is eating. I can only think of a few times since he started taking periactin that he as actually not been able to finish the food on his plate, and that is usually his second serving.

When he is usually the first one to start eating and the last one to reluctantly finish eating, he has been scarfing down food faster than I can finish serving up dinner to the rest of the family and asking for more. He has never eaten like this. Ever. I have been struggling with his weight for years. When he was around 1-1 1/2 he got picky for awhile and didn’t like anything I put in front of him unless it was water. But after he got over that, he had normal eating habits of a typical toddler. He has always been light-weight, but over the past few years, his weight has pretty much stayed the same as he has gotten taller and taller.

For the past two years his weight has been fluctuating between 45 and 48 pounds and has been around 46 for the past 6-7 months. I started getting even more worried last fall when he had been slowly gaining and got to just over 48 pounds and suddenly dropped to around 46 and pretty much stayed there no matter what I did.

Wing Nut started on periactin on a Thursday and I was hoping to get him on the Wii Fit to record his weight every week from then on to see how he responded to his meds. I finally got him on to weigh him today and was shocked that he has already gained just over 5 pounds!  I was so shocked to see the little bar that shows weight and BMI be just under the Underweight line. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had him take his jeans & shirt off so I could get a better reading. I was worried that he was wearing heavy jeans with 5 pounds of Legos in his pockets. His weight was pretty much the same, except he weighed about two tenths of a pound less!

For the first time ever, Wing Nut weights over 50 pounds! He woke up around 10 o’clock to say that he was hungry and we had to fix him a snack. He woke up crying, miserable and hungry and went back to bed 10 minutes later full and happy. What a difference 10 days makes! We are so excited and he is so proud of himself for doing so well and gaining weight so quickly. I am curious to see how the rest of his 3 months of medication goes.

And I was just getting ready to sit down and type out my calzone recipe that I mentioned last night when Wing Nut woke up hungry and I am so excited I just had to share the good news. Sorry to say I don’t have the recipe tonight!