The conclusion at Desmond’s 9 month checkup was that he seemed like a 15 month old.
- he is a GIANT:
height: 29 1/4″ (75-90th percentile)
weight: 24 lb 4 oz (90-97th percentile)
head: 18 3/4″ (97th percentile).
For comparison, at his 6 month appointment: He weighed 20 pounds (90th
percentile), was 27 inches long (75th percentile) and was in the 80th
percentile for head circumference.
- she noticed at the back of his chart they had a “feeding/growth
problem” note back from when we were trying to breastfeed. She said,
that’s definitely no longer a problem!
- they checked his hemoglobin/iron with a toe prick. He did fine,
whined a bit but got over it by playing with the bandaid. Good result:
HGB: 12.7
- he got his 3rd hepatitis B shot and did fine, only cried a little.
- his ears look totally fine now (from the ear infection in august).
since he always as a bunch of wax, they gave me a syringe thingy to do
at home hydrogen peroxide baths to get the wax out on our own.
- she noticed he has big tonsils (but look fine) [oh god, please don't
let him have my tonsils.]
- another tooth is breaking through on the bottom. He now has 4 teeth
on top (central and lateral incisors), 2 central incisors on the
bottom and a new lateral incisor coming through on the bottom. He’s a
bit ahead of schedule on these but they coming in the standard order.
- In terms of development, she says he is VERY advanced with motor
skills (standing/cruising/crawling, almost walking, self-feeding,
using fingers to pick up things, playing peekaboo) and even ahead on
some of the verbal stuff (in that he can say book and poop), the
babbling is on track. they only thing she thought he might be able to
do now that he hasn’t is wave bye-bye.
- he has a yeasty diaper rash that started a few days ago, so we’re going to treat it with a cream
At his 6 month checkup (he was about 6 1/2 months old), we discovered he is growing fast! He weighed 20 pounds (90th percentile), was 27 inches long (75th percentile) and was in the 80th percentile for head circumference.
He’s sitting up a ton, pulling up more, doing a bunch of assisted standing (leaning against the couch), crawling and rolling around a LOT (he’s getting up on his hands and knees now, and doing yoga plank poses that look exhausting).
He’s getting in his second tooth, and has been eating “solid” [read, pureed] food for almost a month now. Mom E has been making his baby food from scratch because steaming and pureeing things is about at the level she can cook. *grin*
So far, he has eaten:
- brown rice cereal
- carrots
- parsnips
- green peas
- potatoes
- cantaloupe in a mesh self-feeder
Desmond is now 6 months old and we’ve had several exciting developments recently.
1. He sprouted his first tooth and went through teething fun to get it..
2. He got his first snuffly nose and learned to hate getting his nose sucked out.
3. He got his first haircut because his hair was getting in his eyes
4. He had his first “solid” food – some rice cereal, and the next day some pureed carrots. Yum.
5. He started rolling over in bed to sleep on his tummy… so he’s out of his swaddle now. Also now in the habit of waking up at 4am. Drat, that sleep through the night thing was awesome while it lasted.
6. He’s rolling around like crazy now, sitting up, starting to hold himself up against the couch and push himself up with his legs… and he’s so close to figuring out how to crawl… he does it just a little bit, but makes more progress by pivoting and rolling.
Here’s a video of his first encounter with rice cereal:
This photo was taken on Easter, when Desmond was a little more than 5 months old. He’s able to sit up unassisted now – as long as you keep an eye out for when he decides to suddenly fall backwards.
We’ve been using a couple signs with Desmond for the last couple months. It’s not that we expect him to understand or emulate yet… but we started early just to get ourselves in the habit. It’s kind of cool now because he’s at the stage where he pays attention to our hands, so we’re not just signing in his general direction. *grin*
The main signs we use so far are: waving hello, mommy, daddy, milk, hungry, and diaper. We occasionally throw in a couple other words like change, more, dog, cat, or book.
The babysignlanguage.com website is pretty helpful, with explanations and videos with demonstrations of the signs.
I post this for my friends who have been curious about what gear we’ve found the most helpful through pregnancy, nursing and babyhood so far. I’m going to link to places that sell the items but I hope it doesn’t seem too sales-y.
Snoogle Pillow – I love this so much. During pregnancy, you’re advised to try to sleep on your left side. It was tough for me to adjust. I got it during the first trimester and it was a big help to support the legs/belly. I brought it with me on our road trip and even had someone bring it to me at the hospital during labor. I still use it to sleep sometimes now, and sometimes use it as a support to feed the baby in bed (if I don’t want to get up to get the Brest friend from the other room). Note: it can be helpful to buy an extra cover because it can be very frustrating when you want to use it and the other cover is in the wash – this is how attached I got *grin*.
BrestFriend – This has been really helpful for nursing. It saves your arms by letting the baby rest on the pillow. I also often rest it on the edge of my desk and nurse while on the computer. I’m nursing him as I write this, actually. Note: the cover is detachable and washable, but I just throw one of the many receiving blankets on top to catch the inevitable drool/drip/spitup.
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Arm’s Reach co-sleeper – people have strong opinions about where babies should sleep. For us, we like having him right next to the bed – we can check for wet diapers or hand him a pacifier or turn on a mobile without getting out of bed. I also haven’t had much of that new-parent paranoia “is he breathing??” – because I can hear him – but he doesn’t often wake me unless he needs something.
We’re lucky to have a pretty sound sleeper, too – I don’t think we’ve ever woken him up by getting into bed or talking or whatever. Our current plan is to keep him by the bed while he’s nursing (~6 mos) and then move him either to the other side of the room or to his nursery. Once he can pull himself up, the co-sleeper converts to more like a crib – with higher sides. It can also convert to a playard. The only downside I’ve found is that since it doesn’t have slats, it’s harder to attach things like mobiles (we use a slatted chair next to the co-sleeper as a workaround).
Anyway: Here’s a pic of it in our room and this video explains how it works better than I can.
Bouncer – we use this every day. It’s awesome because it’s light and portable so we can easily move it from room to room. It has a vibration feature is sometimes calming – but more importantly, you can bounce the chair (lightly) with your foot. I’ve pulled that move more than once while trying to finish dinner. [[there was a couple week period there where baby seemed to wait until we in the middle of a meal to get fussy]]. Also, baby had some spit-up issues for a few days when we were supplementing with formula in the first month. It made us nervous to put him to sleep flat on his back in his co-sleeper because we were worried he would choke. So for a few days, we let him sleep some stretches in the bouncer because it has an incline. Obviously it’s not the best place for a baby to sleep long-term.. but it was fine for a few naps and let us sleep more comfortably. And now that baby is big enough, he’s starting to whack at the toys on the detachable bar – and we just hook on other toys too.
yeah… Desmond is definitely my bebbe. Thankfully, he’s not so much of a chunk. We probably have breastfeeding to thank for that (I was a formula baby and my mother says they put cereal in my bottle pretty early)… but he’s got my nose, hair and chubby cheeks.
