Time Flies By . . . He Struggled To Catch Up, But Has Finally Passed Her By!

My brother has just turned 3 years old. It is amazing how fast time flies by. I so vividly remember that day he and his twin sister were born . . . it forever changed our life!

He and his twin sister were born with only an ounce different in their weight. He was 5 lbs, 13 oz and she was 5 lbs, 12 oz.

That quickly changed. She would be discharged from the NICU just 6 days after their birth, but he wasn't discharged until a week after her (they were 2 weeks old). It was all because of his lack of weight gain.

Over the course of the next few months, we would take trips to the pediatricians for "weight checks" to see how much he had gained . . . or lost. We did all we could and researched all we could to find out how to help him gain weight. Some things seemed like they may have helped some, but some did not help much. The doctors always told us "it's just the Down syndrome," they had no answer. They wanted my mom to stop breastfeeding him and to put him on a "high calorie" formula to make him gain weight. Okay, so take him off of the breastmilk that is extremely beneficial for him, nutritionally & physically, and put him on something inferior to make him gain weight?! No thanks, we didn't do that. He started to slowly gain weight with the breastmilk and all the techniques we were trying.

We weighed him daily at our home and kept accurate records to see how much he'd gain. It was a triumph when he would gain a couple ounces a week! Finally the docs said he was doing okay.

By the time he was 8 months old he was still much smaller, by 4 or 5 pounds, than his twin sister. Then, we found the answer . . . it was again by lots of searching and looking for information.

Nutrivene-D was the answer. Within just a month he had noticeably gained a lot more weight than he had been gaining. It would take the time of a few more months until he started to really catch up to his twin sister. Dr. L encouraged us to start my brother on the NightTime Formula when my brother was a year old. That made a huge difference in my brother! He has grown so much since starting him on it!

I happened to be looking at the dosages on the NightTime Formula bottle the other day and I thought, "I bet he needs to take a whole capsule, instead of the half he's been taking." So, I weighed him last night and sure enough, he is in the range of where he needs to take a whole capsule instead of the half of a capsule. Tonight, my curiosity was up so I weighed his twin sister and guess what . . . my brother weighs TWO POUNDS MORE than his twin sister!!! She's 26 lbs and he's 28 lbs.

He started off just an ounce heavier than her, he struggled for a year or a year and a half to catch back up to her and now he weighs 2 pounds more than her! It is awesome. I know without Nutrivene-D my brother would not be so well off! We are forever grateful that we learned about it when we did!

Thanks for letting me share another bit of our wonderful journey :)!