Thursday, January 10, 2008

Two-month checkup

At 23 ¾ inches and 13 lbs., Baby is growing like a champ and falling between 80th and 85th percentiles. He charmed the doctor with all sorts of coos and smiles, but then they had to ruin it all with four shots plus an oral vaccine. Baby’s reaction to shots, if I could put it into words, would go something like this:

Shot 1: “Whoa, that hurts. You better knock if off, lady.”
Shot 2: “I said I do not like this, lady. What did I ever do to you?”
Shot 3: “What part of KNOCK IT OFF do you not understand?”
Shot 4: “YOU MOTHER F***ER!!!!!”

With all the wonders of modern medicine, why can’t they figure out how to give several vaccines with just one needle stick? I mean seriously, four different sticks? I would be pissed, too.

Following the appointment, instead of drifting off into a stress-induced sleep coma for several hours, like Child used to do after all of his immunizations, Baby insisted on continually telling us how pissed he was about the whole ordeal for the next 48 hours. Poor guy, I really felt sad for him. And boy, I surely am not looking forward to the next round of shots at the four-month checkup.

He is developing right on track, and with his weight, we should be able to start solids at four months if we wanted to. His head and neck muscle control is great, although I have been pretty lax with giving him tummy time (because he hates it so), so I need to do better. Like all babies, he has the sweetest toothless smile, which he gave only to his dad for the first couple of weeks and then finally began doling them out freely to anyone (including me) (I can’t say I wasn’t a little jealous about that).

The best part is (and yes, I know you will hate me for this—and rightly so, I would too), beginning right before Christmas, he started sleeping through the night. From 9 p.m. until 7 a.m. With no sorts of sleep tricks on our part. Child began sleeping through the night at about 2 ½ months, but only with the help of dream feeds (courtesy of the Baby Whisperer book). But Baby actually slept worse when we tried the dream feeds, so we stopped those after a few failed attempts, thinking he was not ready, and lo and behold, he began sleeping all night long. Of course, there are some nights when he doesn’t sleep that well, but those are few and far between. You know, I am almost afraid to post about this, thinking that I will jinx myself. The thing is, he does not sleep during the day. A few 20-30 minute catnaps is all we get. Once in a great while, he can nap for an hour—and it feels like Christmas, I tell ya. Needless to say, I have not been showering much these days. But we do get out of the house a lot, especially with this gorgeous 60-degree weather we’ve been having the last couple of days. So I am stinky, but at least not as exhausted as I used to be. This should be a huge plus when I return to work on Jan. 22. (Once again, really hoping I am not jinxing it).

2 comments:

Sarah said...

hey there! why am i not getting new posts from you on my google reader? did you turn off feeds, or perhaps i screwed something up on my end (more likely)? i will have to make sure to check here more frequently.

wow, that is impressive about sleeping for 10 hours! i was feeling lucky about getting 6-8 hour stretches, but 9pm to 7am is amazing! my question though is, what do you do about becoming engorged by morning? although maybe you have graduated from bfeeding already...but that's my latest challenge.

Rachel said...

You say no tricks on your part to get baby to sleep through the night. Are you still breastfeeding? If so, how often?

I was breastfeeding every 3.5 hours with the OK of the pediatrician and now LG wants to eat every 2 to 2.5 hours for the past 3 or 4 days. He is also waking up after only 2.5 to 3 hours at night after sleeping for a long stretch the first part of the night. He was sleeping 5 to 6 hours for each stretch for awhile. I am not sure if he just hit a growth spurt or if we are moving backwards.

Since things seem to be going well for you, I could use some advice.