whats the best and quickest way to get ds to put some weight on after illness?

[juicychops]

ds been ill for 3 weeks with a virus then pneumonia.

he's now getting over it, but where he's not eaten for 3 weeks he's so so thin.

he was a bean pole to begin with, but now he's literally skeletal. His collar bones and shoulder bones are all sticking out, and his knee caps are sticking out the sides of his legs. his arms are like little sticks and when i touch them there is no muscle or fat around them at all.

He's started eating the last 2 days so im sure he'll start putting weight on soon, but what foods in particular shall i give him to speed up the process?

He can't walk very far without being worn out at the moment so need him to build his strength up

Lots of good fats and protein - oily fish, nuts, avocadoes etc are all high in calories but nutritious.

cool thanks for your reply. how about carbs? shall i feed him up on pasta and rice too?

Stir in some double cream/ melted butter to his food. My DS has a high calorie requirement due to health problems, and this is his dietician's advice.

Give him some minadex for a week or so as well as the above. Plus full fat everything and real butter not marg (although I think unless children are overweight they should have full fat everything anyway).

second minadex - it will help boost his appetite as well as supplementing vit/min intake. Maybe a little it of food and often to start with? With milk to drink if he likes it?

ive never heard of minadex. where abouts can i get it from?

ds felt sick yesterday evening as he had three big meals so yes, i think little and often is the way to go while his stomach gets used to food again

It's a food supplement, not prescription. You'll find it with the complan etc in Boots.

Definitely small frequent meals - six rather than three until his stomach is more tolerant of food.

minadex from boots or probably most chemists

i think i am going to get that tomorrow and give it a go. thanks guys!

hope you DS gets his appetite & some energy back soon, good luck x

thanks. il let you know how he gets on

DD lost half her body weight overnight when she was around a year old. She had dysentry. She took about two weeks to put it all back on, I did as others have suggested, full fat milk, butter, cream, ice cream. You name it, she ate it.
One thing the doctor at the hospital suggested was a soup made with boiled rice and chicken with cream added to it. She ate loads of it then, but refuses to look at it now.

DD continued to be ill after Pneumonia, so much so she was put onto part time School & talk of Juvnile M.E. with her Drs :( I was tearing my hair out as she was just a shadow of her old lively bubbly self & generally just very run down & not eating well :( -

After some research I started giving her a natural food supplement called Spirulina its contains a lot of vitamins & minerals, more Iron that Liver , along with immune boosting enzymes etc etc - she was 5 at the time & initially I gave her 6 tablets a day, split into 3 doses of 2 at a time & then cut down to 2 a day - I bought the compressed tablets & cut them up for her to swallow - she was pretty much back to her old self & back to full time School within a 2wks :)

Its doesn't contain fat, so won't put weight on her, but will give her the building blocks to build up her system again & I found that once she'd picked up her energy levels my own DDs appetite followed suit & she was soon back to her old self weight wise too

oh no rockinhippy, i hope ds doesn't have your dd's bad luck.

i bought that minadex today and he's had one spoonful so far. Hopefully that will pick him up a bit. He seems ok in himself at the moment

Don't worry juicy I'm sure he won't :) - I got the impression its quite rare & most kids recover really quickly, but even if he does you now have the tools to sort it out quickly - it was a bit of a steep learning curve for me at the time

I think in my DDs case it wasn't helped because she already had quite bad intolerances to chemical food additives & the treatment was packed with the stuff, so it was making her ill - but as I'm sure you know too well thats the least of the Drs & your worries when they are trying to cure something as serious as Pneumonia.

The other thing that I should have mentioned above & will settle his stomach after all the anti B's & therefore help with his appetite is Viridian Childrens Stomach Flora powders the anti B's will have killed off his guts "good bacteria" too, & these are great for correcting that balance - you'll find them in any good health store.

Hope he's all better soon :)

thanks rockinhippy i think i might give the flora powders a go too