Nutritionist and EleCare

Because of Rowan's allergies, she is only 15% on the growth chart for height, and 3% for weight. She was always near the 50th percentile, but when I stopped breastfeeding her at 11 months, we couldn't find a formula that she could tolerate. She started drinking rice milk and that's when her growth really slowed down.

We recently met with a nutritionist (Ann Rooney) to make sure we were doing everything we could to help her growth and brain development. Luckily, she has a really healthy diet and eats plenty of fish and vegetables. The nutritionist reviewed what we were doing and told us were doing a phenomenal job (thank goodness!) and she suggested a few new foods, such as cauliflower, beets and papaya.

We also decided that we should try EleCare, a special formula for kids with severe food allergies or GI disorders. It's about $40 a can, but so worth it if it helps Rowan get back on track with growth. I was really discouraged when I read the ingredients, because it contains ascorbic acid, which usually makes Rowan wheeze. Ugh.

I made a call to Dr. Ghory (our allergist) and we decided to go into the office and do a food challenge with it. I was actually pretty nervous because she's such a sensitive kid and we've had quite a few scary reactions this year. They started with small amounts of the formula, and gradually increased it to see if any symptoms came up. We found out that she can tolerate it, and thankfully she chugs it down when its mixed with her rice milk!

We did a food journal for Ann and she's going to calculate the calorie totals for each day. Rowan needs to be getting 960 cal per day to maintain weight, and 1160 per day for catch-up growth.
Hopefully the EleCare will help us get close to these numbers.