Yesterday, Tamara took Dylan into the doctor’s office for an appointment. During this appointment, she asked the doctor about a few things that have been a mild concern for us. One of those is Dylan’s size. Come next Tuesday, Dylan will be 9 months old, and he currently is hovering around 16 pounds in size. According to the doctor, he is in the 5th percentile. What that means is that 95% of children his age are bigger than he is. The doctor did say that he is perfectly healthy, and that there’s nothing wrong with him. However, I have heard that same story myself, and it causes me some concern.
When I was a kid, I also had issues with growth. I was always much smaller than everyone else. Compared to my classmates, I was a tiny guy. My mom took me to the doctor on countless occasions and asked her what was wrong with me. Why am I so small? The doctor said that kids grow at different rates and that I was just at a plateau and before she knew it, I would be shooting up like a weed.
My mom pursued this (among other issues I had) and the doctor insisted that I was fine. I was just a small kid. My dry skin was natural so he prescribed a skin cream. I was pale complected so he told her it was just a phase. You get the idea.
When I was about 11 years old, my dentist of all people stumbled upon something that led to me having to have some special x-rays and eventually a cat scan performed. After finally figuring out what was actually wrong (long story there), they discovered that I had hypothyroidism. It’s a condition where the Thyroid gland does not produce enough hormone. This hormone controls skin color, appetite (to some extent), skin moisture, weight, and last but not least, growth.
Once I was put on medication, everything returned to normal. I started growing, gaining weight, having a good appetite, skin color was normal, etc. There was something wrong all along but my doctor said I was perfectly fine.
For my junior high years, because of my size, I was ridiculed, made fun of, hung in lockers, beat up countless times, thrown across hallways like a football, and many other horrible things. All because I was small. Small enough that when my mom registered me for the 7th grade, the admin person thought I was going into the first grade. Small enough that when I walked into my homeroom, the teacher told me I had the wrong room and that the first graders were downstairs. It took me a VERY long time, and countless days and nights of crying and feeling horrible about myself, before I got over those bad years of being made fun of.
Now here I am, a father to a baby that although appears perfectly healthy, is small.
Now, he doesn’t have the same kinds of symptoms. For him, the only thing that we see is that he’s just small in size. I’m not saying he has a thyroid problem, I’m just saying that I am getting a little worried about the fact that he is so tiny.
The last thing I want to do is see my son go through the kinds of awful treatment I had to endure as a kid. The world today is different. You can be made fun of without even leaving the house. Kids carry guns to school (although not a lot of that around here happens, but you never know). It’s a much more violent and scary world out there now than it was when I was a kid. I really don’t want to see him have to deal with that kind of crap like I did.
Tamara says I should just trust the doctor and believe that he is perfectly healthy and that his only problem just happens to be that he’s a little smaller than other babies. I would be perfectly fine with accepting that but with the type of history I have, and with what my doctors told my mother, it’s very hard to do.
With that said, Tamara said that if by his next appointment, he still hasn’t budged a lot on his growth, maybe we can look into it then. I’m fine with that, but I think this time I will be going to visit the doctor with them, because I want them to know how much this concerns me and how I need to be assured that my son really IS healthy.
I mean, he’s very active, has reached all of typical baby milestones, has a good nature, laughs with us, plays with us, swims with us, and is generally quite content, so with those things being as they are, it does ease it a bit, but the size thing is always going to weigh on my mind. Hopefully, with a little bit of time, it can be appeased.
Have you ever been worried about passing on a trait to your kids that caused you a lot of ache in the past?
Posted on May 29th, 2008 by Matt
Filed under: Matt & Tamara's Baby | 1 Comment »
