Eating issues and Pediasure

The past week or so, Nia has completely slowed down on her eating, taking less & less milk during the day and even lesser solids compared to before. I was alarmed when I noticed she looked and felt like she's lost weight so last Thursday night we hauled her up to a local paed in Taman Tun, a Dr. Altaf who was highly recommended by our friends.

I initially intended to take a cab over from our side of Taman Tun but it started to rain so I waited for hubz to get home first. By the time we got to the clinic it was already past 8pm. He closes at 9.

There were 4 names before Nia's and quite a few kids runnign around the clinic. The staff were so friendly and polite, I was really impressed. It was almost 9 by the time we got to see him. Hubz commented that this doctor was spending a long time with each of his little patients. Then came our turn to find out. Before he even went to our issue of the day, he asked historical data on the child like what was her birth weight, has she had any fever, hospitalisation etc. He carefully wrote down everything before moving to the reason for our visit that day.

After listening to us intently, he checked Nia all over, ears, throat, tummy, lungs, the whole works and declared she seems abolutely fine save for slightly low weight for her age. She was 8.4kg at 13 mths, which, according to him was about 600g short of the ideal weight. She was born at 2.77kg which is also about 600g short of normal weight. It goes to show, he said, that she has not really caught up with the 600g as yet. He suggested we changed her milk to Pediasure complete and start her on MultiVits as supplement.

So last weekend we bought Pediasure and tried feeding her with it. As usual, because I'm there she barely had any, but I managed to coax her by feeding it in her sippy cup instead of bottle and she drank only half of the serving. But she has been taking her multivits every morning.

My aunt says these past two days she only drank 1 serving of the formula the whole day, that is about 220ml (around 7oz) which is too little. My aunt can't seem to get her to drink anymore than that as she prefers drinking water. I tried some of it in my quest to figure out why she does not like it, has anyone tried it before? It is so bloody sweet! It taste just like the vanilla cream drink from Coffee Bean, I'm not kidding. I wonder if I could dilute the formula with water to make it less sweet and try feeding it? Yes, I do know you aren't supposed to do that, but what else?

I notice the past few days since she's been on Pediasure, she wakes up more often in the middle of the night wanting feed, perhaps she's trying to replace the milk she refuses during the day with breast milk? Plausible, no?

Contemplating to try out another brand of formula now.