Eight Months: Changing things up a bit

In midwifery school we were taught about horses and zebras.  The thought is that if I see a woman with shortness of breath and a history of asthma, she most likely has an asthma exacerbation.  It's unlikely she has a blood clot in her lung, a pulmonary embolus.  Asthma is the horse.  The pulmonary embolus is the zebra.  I need to know about the zebras but most often it's going to be the horse.

I've been dwelling on Miles' weight since we were told he was underweight at his four month check up.  That means for more than four months I've thought about his weight every day, about how to get him to eat more, about the number of ounces he's taking in and what kind of long term effects his low weight will have on his brain development.  Our pediatrician, who happens to be a friend of mine at work, has told me not to worry, that it's her job to worry about him and his weight.  It's not quite possible for me not to worry about a potential abnormality in Miles' growth and development.  The problem, I've recently come to realize, is not so much Miles' weight.  The problem might be our pediatrician.  Or, more specifically, my relationship, as a worried mother, with our pediatrician.

I'm not saying I'm ready to jump ship yet.  I've just noticed a few things through this ordeal that may not work for me as a parent.  At our last visit she wanted to do some blood tests because he was staying in the third percentile for his weight.  To me, the fact that his percentiles weren't dwindling any further was an indication that he had plateaued in his percentile.  It would make more sense to seek out an answer for poor weight gain when it was actively happening, not when we were maintaining the status quo.  In addition, she ran a test to check for celiac disease, a disease where the body has a reaction to gluten.  When I looked up the test in my professional resources at work it indicated that testing children under the age of 2 was of little to no value as the test was not accurate in this age group.  Why are we running tests that won't give us any meaningful answers?  Why are we running tests when his weight has stayed in the same percentile? Why are we running tests at all if we have a clear etiology for his poor weight gain: high activity level and low calorie intake.

Furthermore, when I went to my professional resources and put his weight and age for his 8 month check up into a growth calculator, he comes out to the 4.7 percentile.  Not 3rd.  In addition, the resource informed me that a more accurate delineator of poor growth is a weight to length ratio, not an age to weight ratio.  By the weight to length ratio he is in the 4th percentile and anything above the 2nd percentile is considered healthy.

Basically, I feel that because of the type of parent I am - one who will research everything and stress about the littlest abnormality - I need a calm and reassuring pediatrician.  I need someone who won't jump to testing.  I need one who will take all this in stride, understand that most kids are normal.  Especially when the resources I'm using keep telling me he's on the low side of normal.  But he's still NORMAL.  I need my pediatrician to tell me he's a horse, not a zebra.

In other news: we went to the zoo,

Ms. Giraffe

we watched the Ravens make it into the Superbowl,

Dan's popping some clebratory bubbly!

Fireworks at Dan's house after the Ravens
made it into the Superbowl

and we visited the Carscadden clan for dinner this week.  Aunt Mary Ann, Uncle Bill and Aunt Trace were enamored with our little guy.  Mary Ann had a hard time watching Miles get thrown in the air.  She cringed each time it happened.

Swim class was better this weekend - no vomit, no crying or fussing.  Miles has started to anticipate when water will hit his face and he's started to hold his breath.  He's so good at floating on his back that we've moved on to a new hold where he's doing most of the floating work himself.  Yesterday he was passed underwater to me by the swim instructor.  I'm finally having fun in at swim lessons!

Here is our little dwarf this week:

No one knows what's going on here

Playing with my truck

Cheese and cheerios

I like to relax while I take my bottle

What? There's a cat in my chair?

Hey cat! Get outta my chair!

Easily distractible while eating.

Father/son relaxing before bed

Someone is obviously tired

I am so lucky

Let me in!

If I can't go over, maybe I can fit under...

8 Months: Making Waves

As a child, I had barbies.  I guess most girls did.  And like most girls, I assume, I gave my barbie a haircut.  Even as a seven year old, I immediately regretted it.  Poor barbie rocked the skrillex haircut 20 years before it was in fashion.  This week, I thought Miles' hair was getting a little long in front and around his ears.  Of course, I gave him a haircut.  And of course, I immediately regretted it.  At least Miles' hair will grow back; Barbie is stuck with her look in perpetuity.

Before

After

I'm sure the rate of development slows at some point but right now Miles is still rapidly changing.  It happens right before our eyes and it's one of my favorite things about having a kid.  One minute he is stuck on his back.  Then he's rolling over, sitting up, crawling, pulling up.  Currently, he's actively trying to stand.  He pulls up, plants his feet and lets go.  Over and over and over again.  His longest free stand was about 10 seconds but while it was happening it felt like forever.  It's especially funny when he's either really excited about a toy or crying really hard while standing and then realizes he's not holding onto anything.  He looks shocked and then falls to his butt immediately.

An unfortunate side effect of his rapid development is the sleep disturbances that come with it.  Miles is so excited about standing that he would like to forgo sleep to practice his new talent.  I had read this was a thing that happened with skill acquisition but I was wholly unprepared for what it looked like in real life.  What it ended up looking like was Miles waking every hour last night from 8pm to 1am and then staying awake until 3am, squealing and standing in his crib.  He finally succumbed to sleep at 3am, in my arms, on the floor of his bedroom.  I had made a makeshift bed and plugged my ears, waiting for his energy to burn off.  Around 6am, we moved back to our bed.  We were a very tired family when we got up at 8am.

Luckily, we still love him, despite our sleep deprivation, in large part because he's so cute.  He learned how to wave hello this week and it just warms my heart each time it happens.  I come home from work and the first thing he does is wave hello.  Really, at that moment, if you cut me open, my organs would be replaced with some sort of squishy delicious liquid from all the love I feel for this little boy.

And it's a good thing I love him so much because this kid totally threw up on me during swim class today.  He swallowed too much water and the next thing I know I'm covered in vomit.  Only a mother (or father) could love someone who throws up on them.  Imagine getting thrown up on by the drunk homeless guy by the train station.  Or even your college room mate.  You would never think, "Aw poor guy.  He must feel awful.  He probably needs a hug."

Here's our sleepy, skilled, sweet, and sometimes sick, little man this week:

I'M STANDING!!!!!

Just waiting for my pho.  

I'm so super cute.

Fire engines!  Window!
Both equally exciting to an 8 month old!

You put the box within reach, mom, what do you expect?

Egg sushi?

I'm not interested in your egg sushi.

Okay, I changed my mind. EGG SUSHI!

CHEESECAKE and STANDING!
(Miles is really into using caps this week)

Mother/son

We are totally in love.

8 months: Holding Steady

Our house is in upheaval right now.  Tonight Lucas' friend Alex arrives to stay for a couple months.  He'll be staying in our guest bedroom weeknights as he works on a TV series filming in Baltimore.  He and his wife just moved to Pittsburgh but he wanted to work on this job so he'll be with us until sometime in March.

We also moved Miles to his room yesterday.  Eight months old and he slept in his crib for the first time. It did not go well, to say the least.  We were in there rocking him back to sleep four times from 1230am to 5:30am until we gave up and brought him back into our room.  We're still trying to work it all out.  We've been doing a lot of reading on sleep training and Miles is currently at the age that is worst for sleep training 7 1/2-11 months.  He's currently focusing on relationships and making sure Lucas and I are working toward common goals with him.  He's making sure we're on the same team.  So it's not the time to delay going to him when he's crying (which is essentially a part of any sleep training regimen).  At a year old, he's more independent, moving around his world and discovering the parts of his world more thoroughly.  He's less concerned with mom and dad.  We'll start sleep training him then.  Putting him in his own room now is just providing a little breathing room and some solid sleep for me in the evening hours (as Lucas responds to him from 8pm to 12 or 1am; I get the second half of the night).

Miles and I had our first swim class yesterday morning.  I liked it but it was more about making sure Miles gets used to water and eventually can survive if he falls into a pool.  That means there was a little bit of crying on his part (his utter lack of a morning nap may have contributed to the crying).  There was a lot of dunking him under water and trying to force him to use his upper body to pull himself out of the water.  But there were songs and splashing and giggles too.  Overall, I'm really glad we started with swim classes.  I plan to continue after this initial 6 week class.

Miles had his 8 month weigh in this week.  He's 15 pounds, 12 ounces.  Still in the third percentile.  But, he's not losing percentiles.  We're allowed to start increasing other types of food into his diet, one a at a time now.  And I have to limit breastfeeding to once daily (I was feeding three times a day).  The rest of the time I'll be pumping and we'll continue to fortify the breastmilk with formula.  Our pediatrician is still concerned so Miles had a bunch of blood tests taken on Friday to rule out any underlying problems.

Here's our favorite little 3rd percentile baby this week:

No, I will not come back to get my clothes on!
Brooks is here!

Put some clothes on, man!  All the cool kids wear clothes.

Gimme some. I don't know what it is but I want it.

Eating.

Eating is SO exhausting!

I promise, some of the oatmeal made it into his mouth.

Hello!

Go Ravens!

First sleep in his own crib.

I'm pretty much the cutest!

And here are some non-Miles pictures for the week:

Whoa!

Sweet.

Skeptical.

Bored at work.

Dan took off his shirt when the Ravens scored a TD yesterday.

7 months: This kid is on the move

I know that everyone says that kids grow so fast and that in a blink of an eye they're grown.  This week that sentiment holds true.  In a blink of an eye he's pulling himself up and standing against any vertical surface, including the walls.  Now he's attempting to balance without holding on.  Oh yeah, he can walk (albeit in a herky jerky way) behind his ride along truck or holding our hands.  Lucas and I have commented that we totally missed the milestone of his being able to sit up from lying down because it came around the same time as the pulling himself up milestone (which admittedly felt huge at the time).

Our kid is totally a crawler now.  I feel comfortable saying he can crawl.  For a while he was taking three or four coordinated strides in the elevated crawl position before dropping to the army crawl but now he's definitely crawling.  He utilizes the army crawl too and maybe even more often.  But crawling has definitely entered the mix.

I'm still pumping all day and breastfeeding him only at bedtime and in the wee hours of the morning.  I'm a little done with all this pumping but I won't quit before his 8 month check-up at the end of next week.  At this point, I think if straight-up formula was a better option for him to gain weight more quickly I would be willing to stop pumping.  But I had some major meltdowns last week when I thought my milk supply was drying up.  I can tell this whole breast milk dilemma is going to weigh heavily on me no matter which way we slice it.

Following Christmas I am now the owner of an iPad.  Miles and I have been facetime chatting with my mother.  It's pretty cool.  He's fascinated by the whole process but obviously doesn't really understand it yet.  It's nice that my mother can watch Miles' development in real time.

New years eve we went to the aquarium.  It was packed!  Apparently everyone who had a kid and the day off went to the aquarium.  Miles enjoyed the fish and people watching equally.  I'm excited to go back on a weekday when everyone is at work!

Our kid, moving on up in the new year:

I love my baby boy.
He loves my necklace.

Japan(blocks)!

Baby Godzilla destroys Japan(blocks)!

Awkward family portrait!

I like your shoes!

Cutest. Baby. Ever. 

Baby sizes up floor-clean-o-bot.

That guy is always following me around!

Aquarium!

Jellies at the National Aquarium

Are you ready for this jelly?

Guitar butt

Now I know who stole my sock!

Crawling!

I'm coming for you!

Apparently it's time to reinstall those safety straps.

I'm eating noodles and broccoli!