Bryce's 15-Month Pediatric Visit

This morning,I took Bryce to his 15-month well child check. I look forward to these appointments because it gives us a chance to catch up with his pediatrician, Dr. Simone, who is an excellent doctor! These appointments are also the time that they make sure that the kids are developing normally.

Weight - Bryce is 26.5 lbs which is in the 75th percentile.
Height - Bryce is 31 inches which puts him at the 50th percentile.
Good news--Our chunky monkey's height is starting to catch up with his weight!

GI Doc conversation: Dr. Simone agreed that Bryce's current GI doctor, Dr. Noel, is not being very thorough at this point. Dr. Noel has still not given us any plan of action on what to do with Bryce after the probe. So, two things resulted: First, Dr. Simone is going to intervene and contact Dr. Noel to find out the latest plan of action. Second thing, Dr. Simone thinks it's time to refer us to Cincinnati Children's Hospital since they have an Eosinophilic Center for Bryce to be seen at and is a center of excellence for gut issues. (Yaaaaaaaah!!!)

In addition, Dr. Simone referred us to a case manager to help coordinate getting us to Cinci and helping us with other resources. Dr. Simone walked us over to see the case manager, Donna. In addition to talking about Cinci, Donna mentioned that once we fill out some paperwork, she can get us a referral for a feeding specialist--this person is very specialized, very few in the country and works in CA. The will pay for this feeding specialist to come HERE to San Antonio to see Bryce once we get everything approved! That would be great since right now, Bryce only eats his special formula, carrots and an occasional banana. (He wants to eat more but everything seems to affect his GI tract!)

On the Well Child Check, Bryce seems to be almost completely normal. It was reassuring to have him pass the autism checklist (although he's a super social guy but still good to have him pass it). The one thing she is worried about is that he's not walking completely on his own yet. Dr. Simone said that if toddlers aren't walking by 15 months, they send them to Physical Therapy and get x-rays. So, we just got x-rays and have a referral to Physical Therapy.

Personally, I'm not really worried, neither is Andy or our babysitter, Mandi, about his walking. Bryce walks great with one hand, loves his push walker and walks around stuff all the time. But he doesn't stand for long on his own and even with lots of encouragement, will not take a step on his own. Instead he falls down to his knees within about 5 seconds if you let go of his finger or isn't holding onto something. So, we'll go do the physical therapy and hopefully learn some new tricks to get him walking.

We also went to the lab and drew blood from Bryce today. Dr. Simone is going to check all kinds of things just to make sure we haven't overlooked anything.

As you can tell, it was a busy visit with mostly positive results. Andy couldn't go with me to the visit, but our wonderful babysitter, Mandi, helped entertain Bryce so I could talk to Dr. Simone. We are so lucky to have Mandi in our lives and a wonderful pediatrician.

As I get more updates, I'll let you know. Thanks to all of you for your positive thoughts and prayers.