Share the first part of R.'s story for readers on Sleuth! When and why did you start to feel concerned?

My son is almost two years old now. Last summer (when he was about 1 year old), he was sick for two or three weeks in a row. We weren't too concerned at the time, and then suddenly – well, it wasn’t sudden, but it seemed sudden – he lost 10% of his body weight within a month. He got to the point where he was so backed up, he wasn't eating anymore. I'm sure there were signs earlier that we didn't catch. For instance, he was not going to the bathroom regularly. And between me and my husband and our childcare, we never put that together. By the time we saw all the symptoms, he wasn't eating very much. And when he did, he’d throw up. Lots of throwing up. And he was in massive pain all the time. He was in such pain a few times that we had to go to Urgent Care. It was the worst. The scary thing was also that he just stopped all of the progression that he had been making. He had been cruising and starting to walk, and he just stopped everything. He wasn't talking yet, and he just became listless. It was terrifying. We never diagnosed why he lost all the weight. We found that there were a bunch of different issues, gastrointestinal issues. The weight came back first, but the bigger problem was that it took longer for him to get back to any physical and speech milestones. He started walking only once he had started on a new formula for a few months and gained weight. Now, we're actually seeing progression in his speech, which we haven't seen in the past. Up until he was well over 18 months old, he had no words that were consistent. I'm sure they’re supposed to have at least five to 10 words (or so) at that stage. That's when we went to a speech pathologist, and they acknowledged that he should have some consistent words. Recently, he's developed around 20 consistent words, and he's imitating, and you can just see him gaining confidence and gaining consistency. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.