Today was Ellie's 4 month check-up. She did great. She was 11 pounds 4 ounces which is 10th percentile and an almost 3 pound gain over 2 months. She was 23 1/2 inches long which is 25% and her head circumference was also 25%. The doctor is happy with her growth and said she was a perfect 10! (we've known that all along) She had 2 shots which she was a real trooper for. The first one is less painful and she hardly cried at all. The second one she cried for maybe 5 seconds and then was happy to be picked up and loved. The big news was that the doctor said she was close enough to the 12 pound mark to start cereal. Yay!
So of course Jason stopped on the way home from work and picked up a box of rice cereal. It actually went okay. At first she didn't know what to do and spit it out all over herself. I really didn't know cereal would be soooo messy. I don't know why, I guess I just didn't think about it. I bought a new Bumkins bib because I saw Vera's and loved it. Unfortunately Ellie is really into the slippery fabrics and so she just wanted to hold on to her bib and get it into her mouth. This unfortunately made it pretty useless. She had cereal in every crease of her neck, all over her clothes, of course all over her face...it was so funny! After a few minutes she seemed to figure it out. I'm pretty sure she actually swallowed some :) She was making chewing motions which they say is a good sign and it seemed like not all of it came back out. Apparently it gets better every day so we'll see.
I'm hoping the cereal will help curb Ellie's appetite in the afternoon. It is hard to breastfeed and go back to work! I have done really well until this week and for some reason I have not been able to keep up with her eating at all. I talked to the lactation consultant and she gave me a few tips and also talked to Jesse for some tips. It is so nice having a sister that has just been through this! So this weekend my plan is to drink a lot of water, sleep, pump and nurse like crazy. I'm going to try the Fenugreek herb too....any other suggestions are welcome!!! I'd really like to not have to use formula yet but I'm also not going to go crazy and stress myself out over this. Luckily the doctor was very helpful with keeping the whole situation in perspective for me.
Unfortunately tonight she started acting like she wasn't feeling great. I think she had a little bit of a fever from her shots and she didn't even want to eat which was very strange (the first time ever). So we cuddled up and slept in the recliner for a few hours. Poor girl. I gave her some tylenol and she finally ate about 11:30 and seemed to feel much better. It is so sad when you see your baby feeling bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment