Question: Dear Doctors. I am a mother to a 1yr 2 months baby girl. At this age, her weight is 7.01 kg. Her delivery weight was 2.7kg. I was informed by my Paed that she is far below the expected growth rate for babies at her age. She is full breastfed and has allery to cows milk. From born until 2 months ago she was taken care by our maid which ran away from the house recently. I suspected the root cause of her underweight condition is she was not being fed by the maid at home (my mistake of course for not monitoring!) coz her weight gain for the first year of her life was very minimum i.e: 200 grams for 3 weeks. Now since the maid has left she is being fully taken care by me and babysitter (day time). My question is, what can I do to increase her weight and ensure that she is growing, and also to recover the nutrients that she has perhaps loss earlier? And what can I do to boost her immune system since she falls sick quite frequently. Thanks a lot
Answer: I often see kids at the clinic with similar concerns. In a nutshell, 3 things we need to ascertain : input , output and underlying diseases. It’s very difficult for me to assume that inadequate intake (input) is the reason for her poor weight gain without knowing her height , head growth and overall wellbeing . Your child shd be examined by a paediatric doctor. Some kids may not be fed adequately. But some who are overconsuming milk would also have poor weight gain and nutritional deficiencies. If your child is a poor solid eater and only consumed breastmilk most of the time, likely there is also iron defieciency which could lead to low red blood cell level in the blood. Some have underlying illness like unrecognized asthma , urinary tract infection etc. Some vomits and have diarrhoea often (output). My advice Farah , pls get a referral topaediatric clinic at the hospital ya.