Progress Report

So...

Jess had her 4 month appointment on Friday. And she was exactly four months old, then, too.

We had her dressed up in her Very Hungry Caterpiller © outfit which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We took her back into the doctor's room (a very small room - usually the check-up rooms are bigger. This one was somewhat larger than a closet) and took off her coat and hat.

The nurse was enraptured over the VHC outfit.

"Oh! How cute! I didn't know they had outfits for it. I've just GOT to give you the book. It's a 1-2 year old book, but you can have it early." And she snuck into the book closet and presented us with a copy of the Very Hungry Caterpillar which was extremely cool.

Kevin had never seen the book before. He had no idea why we had an outfit with a caterpillar on it.

We got Jess out of her outfit and measured and weighed her. She is 24 &fraq3/4; inch long, weighs 12 pounds 6 ounces, and has a head circumference of 16 inces. This puts her at 45%, 75%, and 45% for national average. Jess's doctor tells me it's not the percents themselves that are important (which is good - no need to encourage the whole "you're fat" mentality at this age) but the curve. As long as Jessica continues to develop along the same curve (which is to say, at 6 months, she should still be 45/75/45) as she is on now (and was on at birth) with a variance of 5-10% either way, then she's doing well. It's when she falls off her birth-measurement curves that there's a problem. Like, say, if at six months, she's 20/70/10, that would indicate a problem.

We talked with Beth for a while - the lactation consultant (or breast nazi, whichever you prefer) and decided to go ahead and start feeding Jessica solid foods. She already liked jello and was interested in watching what Kevin and I eat. (Dr Chen was, by the way, not at all happy about the jello. Apparently jello has an allergen in it. But as Jess doesn't seem to be allergic to that, I'm not too worried about it)

Also, we were told to get vitamens for Jess. (Ok, maybe I'm being snide here, but if breastmilk really is the baby's perfect food, WHY does Jess need vitamens? Isn't she supposed to get all the nutrition she needs from breastmilk?)

So we go out to the K-mart (since Kevin needed socks anyway - someone is stealing his socks when we do the laundry. I refuse to believe that the dryer is eating at least 2 pairs of socks a week and he was down to having only 4 pairs left from a minimum of 12 pairs) and got rice cereal and 4 baby bowls and 4 baby spoons (with the color-changing rubber coated safety tips) and 2 jars of baby food squash. We also happened to give in to temptation and bought a copy of X-men United. Bad, evil us.

After we got home, I mixed Jess up a small bowl of rice cereal. I have decided that rice cereal tastes like vaguely sweetened wet paper. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why babies would like it. And, as I understand it, a lot of babies don't. Their first reaction to rice cereal is "Hey, woman, you trying to poison me here or what?" Not Jess. She thought rice cereal was extremely cool, opened her mouth for each spoonful and seemed disappointed when the bowl was empty.

The next day we went to Babies R Us to get the vitamens, which Dr Chen had assured us that they carried. They did not. Not only didn't they, but at least four cashiers had never even heard of them. Well, they lost out on that sale. We'd picked up a few other things that we needed (that are easily available - and cheaper - in other stores) on the basis that "we were there anyway", and we put them all back.

I had already made the grocery order, so after our failed outing to Babies R Us, we went to pick up the groceries, and fortunately, the Farm Fresh had all the baby stuff we needed, even the vitamens, which were, for some strange reason, behind the counter at the pharmacy department. Or maybe it's not so strange. Baby vitamens are about $10 for a tiny little bottle. Anyway, we got home, put the groceries away, and attempted to administer vitamen drops to Jessica.

She's normally pretty good about taking medication. She makes some faces the first few times, but she usually doesn't spit it out.

She would NOT take the vitamens. I don't blame her. The stuff even smelled bad. And what's worse, the bad smell didn't go away. The bad smell lingered around the baby until I gave her a bath. I've got a call into the pediatrician to ask really, how necessary are these vitamens? And if I could use something else. Gerber makes vitamen drops that are supposed to be apple flavored. Anything's got to be better then these things.

So, that's what's up on the baby-front...

Posted by tisfan at February 16, 2004 11:26 AM