Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Elsie's 1 year check-up


I took Elsie to the doctor today for her 1-year check up. I forgot to write down her stats exactly (trying to manage a fussy baby!) so this will be from memory. I am going to call them tomorrow and ask exactly what her stats were for my own sake.
29 inches long (to me it looked like 29.5). I think she was at the 50% for height.
18 pounds (hasn't gained since her last appointment). 20% (guessing).
I don't remember her head but he said it had grown and was around 50%.
The concerns were definitely her weight! The girl eats and poops just fine but I guess she is just very active and doesn't eat a lot of fatty foods or protein rich foods. She essentially breastfeeds and then gets either fruits or vegetables at meals. I bought some baby food tonight with chicken and beef so we will be starting those soon.
He also recommended perhaps supplementing my breastmilk with cow's milk. Since I'm pregnant, I'm really not sure how good my milk supply is. I am very hestitant to feed babies cow's milk (Abigail has never had any).
So I am looking into alternative choices for her that offer the same fat and vitamins that cow's milk supposedly does. We'll see. We used coconut milk for Abigail but I need to find an alternative to that that does not contain so many processed additives.
I had decided to give myself a break and gradually start weaning Elsie by not pumping in the evenings to store up milk for her. Now I'm thinking that it might be helpful for me to keep this up a while longer and feed her the extra milk I'm pumping the next day. It definitely won't hurt my milk supply to do this.
Also we discovered that she has a little baby "hernia" - although my doctor was hesitant to diagnose it as such - the word did come out of his mouth. :) He said that lots of babies have them and not to be concerned but that it should close up on its own.
I did my own research and apparently this is true. From what I found if the hernia goes back inside the body when the baby is resting (not straining) then it should close up by itself although sometimes it takes up to 5 years. We'll definitely be keeping our eyes on it!
The poor girl is still teething up a storm. Her top tooth finally did come in today (I think) and I can feel that the molar is getting closer and closer to the surface. I can't wait for this to be done because she woke up 4x last night. Poor girl!

3 comments:

Susan said...

I know that Gina's baby has gained well on goat's milk and I am sure she would share how that is going.

Unknown said...

I have a feeling that goat's milk would be similar to cow's milk if the goat in question were raised in the same way (antibiotics, hormones, grains not grass, and then cooking/killing the milk). I would like to talk to her about it though.

I'm also thinking about Snowville Creamery Milk since we can get that around here easily. I think it is probably the best possible form of cow's milk. (unless raw).

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