I took Wes to the doctor today for his one-year appointment. The receptionist remembers Wes from when he was teeny-beeny (I had to bring him in every week for weight checks for the first two months), and she always comments on how big he is.

“Big” is a relative term, though. Wes is growing for sure, but I’m sorry to say that he’s stuck in that rear-facing car seat for a long while still. He has to be 20 pounds, and so far he hasn’t quite tipped 16 pounds. Today he was 15.95 pounds and 27.5 inches long (up from the 3 lbs 15 oz and 16 inches at birth).

His checkup was fine. The doctor said if Wes doesn’t get teeth in the next three to six months that he’ll order x-rays, but it’s not uncommon for kids Wesley’s age to still be toothless. We talked about Wesley’s eating habits. The short of it is that Wes will pretty much eat anything that comes in contact with his mouth–and like it too–but we always get the encore act of everything he eats when he spits it up again later, sometimes over and over again. I recently started giving him whole milk but stopped when I realized the smell of curdled, partially digested milk is way worse than formula or breastmilk. I mean, waaaaaaaaaay worse. When I asked the doctor when I could expect Wes to get over his spitting up, he shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” Although he did say that a lot of babies show marked improvement between 12 and 13 months. He wasn’t sure if that would apply to Wes since he’s much smaller than other kids his age.

Speaking of size, the nurse couldn’t get the computer program to print out the growth charts specifically for kids with Down syndrome, so we got Wesley’s stats on a regular chart instead. And he doesn’t even make it to the Zero Percentile for any of his measurements. You see all these lines zig-zagging upward, showing the range of growth progress, and then there’s Wesley’s little dot plotted a half-inch below all the lines. Poor kidlet. But I’m pretty confident that on the DS chart he’d probably be somewhere around 20% for most of his stats.

The doctor also said about Wesley’s reflux that it’s possible his Down syndrome is making it hard for him to get over it by the way his little body is set up inside. Maybe his stomach tissues are more sensitive or something.

Also related to his DS, I have to take Wes to get his thyroid checked annually. Wes is at a higher risk for thyroid problems because of the Down syndrome. Our doctor treats other DS patients, and several of them are on medication to help regulate their thyroids. The thyroid test involves a blood draw at the hospital lab, but I couldn’t bring myself to take him today since he got three shots and blood taken from his toe for an iron check. (It turns out Wesley’s iron level is low, but not anemic, and the doctor suggested we feed him more meat. Every man’s dream!)