My Little Guy Is Not Gaining Weight

My pediatrician is awesome. Her name is Dr. K. Norton and she is located in Crestwood ###-###-####). My son who is now almost 4 had a lot of the same issues. He ate all the time and just did not gain weight. Well then he started losing weight. She sent us directly from the doctor's office to Children's hospital to have tests run. Luckily everything turned out fine and now he is gaining weight and everything seems fine. But she was definitely on top of things. She even called me on a Friday evening to tell me the results because we were getting ready to leave town and she wanted to make sure we knew the results before we left. When my other son was a little over a year old, he stopped gaining weight (he never lost weight) but she made us come back monthly to check his weight until he started gaining weight. Even though it ended up being nothing and everything seems fine now, it made me feel better to have the tests run. Good Luck.

Dr. Jennifer Arter at Blue Fish Pediatrics near West County Mall. My DD was always huge (off the charts) but then from 9 months to 16 months gained NO weight at all. Even though she was still 45th percentile, Dr. Arter sent us to Children's for a bunch of tests just to make sure we weren't missing anything. And called me personally to tell me everything was ok. She's awesome-so much that we followed her out there, even though we live in the city.

I have kidney problems, so Dr. Susan Irvine had both kids checked when they were just a few weeks old. She talked us through so much! She works from St. Mary's in Maryland Heights. I highly recommend her, but I'm not sure if she's taking new patients.

Hi C.. My daughter is small, my nephew is small and some friends of mine have a daughter diagnosed as failure to thrive because she was so small. All are eating and growing and meeting developmental benchmarks, and all are fine. It turns out that some kids are just small and nothing is wrong.

Of course, if you feel like you need a second opinion, you should get one! I go to Forest Park Peds in the city, so don't know if that's even possible for you, but I love them.

By the way, my daughter lost almost a pound of her only 17lbs from a bad cold at 9 mons., so I wouldn't assume that the weight loss is necessarily a developmental problem. She gained it back within a month of being healthy.

Best of luck!
M.

Hi C.-
First off, I had the same problem with my litte guy (who is not so little anymore!) He was always in the 3 percentile range - just a little bitty dude. He started kindergarten at 5 years old weighing a mere 37 lbs! He was in a 2-3 toddler size clothing but ate like a champ. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, just a small fry. Now he's 15, is 4 inches taller than me and built like a brick house!

Second, I have the absolute best pediatrician. His name is Dr. Rohatgi (pronounced row-hot-gee). He is located right in South County at Highway 270 and Tesson Ferry (Mattis Road) in the new medical building on the south side of the road next to the indoor soccer place. He can be reached at ###-###-####. He's wonderful. I know his name seems like his English would be rough, but he's from New Jersey, so he speaks the same as you and me -no broken English or accent. He's amazing.

Good luck!