Olivia's Labs

At Olivia's last doctor's appointment (before she went to the hospital for croup), her weight had gone up 1 pound and she hadn't gotten any taller.  Apparently on the medical charts at the office this put her weight in a low percentile and the doctor got all worked up about it.  I won't go into much detail, but basically we were told that we needed to give her a different diet and she had to go do labs to check her thyroid, for anemia, and also a urine test. 

She is a perfectly happy and almost always healthy little girl.  So, I went back and forth on whether or not to go for the tests.  We went to a nutitionalist who told us her weight was actually just fine--- great actually since she was breastfed as an infant instead of using formula (formula babies tend to be much chunkier as toddlers.)  The only issue would be if she doesn't consistently gain weight or if her weight drops.

She has since gained another pound (in a month this time... not three) and that's without following the doctor's diet plan!  Rex and I talked about it and we've decided to switch pediatricians.  Our current one was my pediatrician when I was little, but she just doesn't match our parenting style.  There have been only a couple(like 2... seriously) appointments that we didn't leave with a prescription for some antibiotic and we didn't fill half of them.  Not every time a kid gets sick is it some horrible bacterial infection they can't fight by themselves.  Anything viral can't be treated with antibiotics, anyway, in which case all you do is kill their good bacteria (good bacteria aids digestion... which is part of why antibiotics can cause constipation.)

Anyways, enough of my rant on antibiotic overuse... I finally decided to do the labs.  Olivia's next appointment with the current pediatrician is the 27th.  We'll get the results from the lab, the doctor will see her weight gain, and then we'll switch to a new practitioner.  I figure it'd be better to leave on a good note than as a non-compliant patient.

So off to the hospital we went for labs this morning.  Olivia hated it.  The phlebotomist tried twice unsuccessfully to get a blood draw going and then had to get someone else.  Third time was the charm and Olivia was oh so happy to be done with it.  She drained her entire bottle of juice and then happily sucked on the lollipop they gave her.  She also got 6 stickers which are now decorating my car's back seat cushions. lol.  She's now happy as a clam again and watching Caillou on tv.

I'm going to be very happy come the 28th when this is all done with and we can finalize the switch.