Weaning Wednesdays: Beneficial bacteria

We went to visit a PD today to have baby J's weight gain checked as we were worried as his weight gain seemed to have plateaued (at least going by our estimates, with no weighing scale to guide us!).  Hubby's ex-colleague recommended her friend, who happened to run a clinic near our place, so we popped by for a consult in the afternoon.

It turns out that baby J's weight and height more or less put him on the 25th percentile.  That's been the norm for the boy in terms of weight, but it meant that he's slowing down in terms of height increase, as he used to be on the 50th percentile for height (yup, the fellow is rather small-sized, but hey, both his parents are small, so what do you expect?).  The weird one was the head circumference measurement: He's been moving up the charts from the 25th, to 50th to now, the 75th.  Hubby says its nothing to worry about, so I guess our little guy just has a big head.  Probably from all the praise he's getting from the grandparents!

So anyway, the PD said we didn't need to worry so much about the little boy's weight gain, and that it probably slowed thanks to his reflux, increase in activity and teething (and she mentioned the fellow had lots of teeth for his age!).  However, she prescribed probiotic drops for him (containing Lactobacillus reuteri, produced by BioGaia) to see if it might help.  Her take on it was that probiotics may help the fellow's gut, which may also in turn, help in improving the boy's reflux, as well as aid in better weight gain.  A quick check online yielded some interesting information on the bugs I'm supposed to feed the boy:

1. L. reuteri is more effective in improving colic symptoms compared to simethicone (used to treat colic), based on one randomized trial on exclusively breastfed infants.

2. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study done on infants in child-care showed that those who were fed formula supplemented with L. reuteri had fewer and shorter episodes of diarrhoea, as well as less episodes of fever, clinic visits and child-care absences, compared to infants fed formula with Bifidobacterium lactis supplementation or no probiotics.

So we'll start on the probiotics tomorrow, and hopefully it'll help with all those gut issues *fingers crossed*!

On the weaning front, I've been trying to add more green veggies to the list.  Hence the boy has just tried french beans, and since my mum bought a whole box of persimmons, he got to try that as well, and he loves them (Another orange thing to the list of favs I guess)!

Oh, and its the hubby's birthday today, so we went out for dinner to celebrate (more on Friday about the food!)... Happy birthday dear! :)