The feedback surrounding weight gain and 'normal' ranges was very interesting
for me.  Cherie asked, "Who has said that this is underweight?"  I may have
misstated the diagnosis of his condition although according to these charts that
all the MDs have he is off the bottom of the chart for weight and has been since
he "fell" off at about 17 months, right around when we removed his allergic
food.  They keep trying to classify him as "failure to thrive" because at 15
months he weighed maybe 24 lbs, fell to 21 and has been the whole past year
trying to gain this back, with at times no growth for 6 months.  His height
also stopped -- that is, he did not gain inches at the previous rate and is
now also below zero percentile for age.  I must say though for his height, he
is of average weight, meaning most people who see him don't think of him as
different--perhaps a bit precocious since he looks like a very fluent capable
20 month old (and is really 30 months).

My feeling is they gauge weight according to rate and if you fall a certain
number of percentiles in a certain amount of time, you may be classified as
having a pWeroblem.  In our case, the nutritionist (who knew NOTHING about allegie
s or food and actually gave us the standard list for beefing up the child's
diet which included only milk, cream, eggs and the like,none of which he
can eat), anyways, she found his caloric intake sufficient (around 1200/day).
So the gastroenterologist and the nutritionist find no medical reason for his
slower growth and I just have the impression that his intestines needed a while
to recover from 15+ months of exposure to allergens before he was tested (these
range from soy, eggs, dairy, nuts, peanuts and legumes, grains, to a few veggies
and fruits).

We are not so worried right now because he is alert, active and happy, just
small (for the moment we think).  If you are worried, you can chart the growth
across time, and you are supposed to see a curve which no matter, which percentile
it reflects, still shows steady growth.

Beware though, these standards are based on god knows what group of 'represen-
tative' children and can be misleading if you take the charts too seriously.

Susan
ps Janine- it does sound like you have at least one major unidentified allergen
still in the mix.  Nicky was like this even after we eliminated dairy, peanuts,
and eggs just from observation.  We couldn't figure out WHY he stillhad so
much eczema.  Then the RAST showed a massive allergy to all gluten grains...
bingo.