Vacation – from the inhaler

It’s May, and that means we’re officially on vacation from Colin’s inhaler. I am fairly certain the pulmonologist will want to put him back on this fall again, because with his last cold he needed to have more Albuterol treatments, but at least for a few glorious months, we no longer have to pin the boy down and make him breathe through the mask.

Let me tell you, those treatments may have only been two minutes long, twice a day, but they felt like an eternity. (I can just imagine what Colin thought about them.) One of the side effects our doctor warned us about with the QVar is slower growth, another is problems sleeping. Hey, we have both those problems! 

Obviously, the benefit of keeping Colin’s lungs healthy, and him out of the hospital, has outweighed the potential effects the QVar may have had on his weight gain and sleep. But now that we’re able to take a break from it for a few months, I am really, really hoping he’ll get a growth spurt (and maybe sleep through the night somewhat regularly). 

Speaking of growth, the nutritionist was here last week. Colin did gain weight this month — but only enough to barely top his weight from two months ago. (He lost weight last month because he was sick and not eating.) So he is now up to 21.1 pounds and 30.5 inches. For comparison, Veronica is 32 inches tall. (We didn’t weigh her at the visit, so I don’t know for sure what she weighs. I would guess she’s close to 24 pounds now though.)

So we continue to make as many calorie-dense foods as possible for Colin, and are trying to add as much fiber to his diet as well. (We’d like to be able to take him off the Miralax at some point too.) Colin is generally a good eater and will try many more things than Veronica will. But he also never stops moving, and now that he’s walking he is burning even more calories. Add to that the fact that breathing is more work for Colin (and therefore burns more calories too), and you can see why we struggle to get enough calories into him.

Unfortunately, the calorie-dense cooking often works at odds with my attempts to lose weight. (Really, you think I’m going to be able to have a loaf of banana blueberry bread sitting on the counter and not have some?) But the high-fiber diet will benefit us all. Who in this country probably couldn’t use more fiber in their diet?