ferberizing

Last night, Chris went to sleep by himself with only three minutes of mild fussing. Tonight, however, he put out five minutes of blood curdling, gurgling screaming. I then went in for his five minute check to reassure and console him, and after that he settled down and went to sleep. I hope that doing this has no long lasting negative consequences, such as learning to hate the crib, or a lack of trust in humanity. Hopefully he will just learn how to go to sleep on his own.

ages and stages

I just re-took the Ages and Stages questionnaire online, scoring Chris more generously, giving him a "yes" if I have seen him do something rather than "sometimes", and he scored in the normal range.

4 month doctor's visit

Chris had his four month doctor's visit today, and a couple of things are worrisome to me. His weight is 12 lb, now only in the fifth percentile. That's down from the 20th percentile at two months, and 40th at birth. He is a week short of four months (I found out they measure it by date of the month, not weeks since birth.) His head is 17.5 inches, still 90th percentile, and his length is 23.5 inches, 17th percentile. The PA we saw today wasn't concerned about Chris' low weight, but I am. At my request, he has a appointment in a month for a weight recheck. I don't know why he is so skinny. He seems to be satisfied after feeding. I am concerned that he is falling off of his growth curve. Anything outside of the 5th to 95th percentiles is concerning.

The other concern was that he didn't score so well on his developmental questionnaire. He scored lower than expected on gross motor, fine motor, and social development, and now he has a referral in to evaluate for possible developmental delay. This doesn't mean at this point that he has a diagnosis of developmental delay, however it could be possible. To diagnose developmental delay, he would need to be consistently missing milestones, and this was just a screening questionnaire that I filled out. However, it's a possibility that Chris may end up having developmental delays. Developemental delays and having a special needs child are something I worried about occasionally during the pregnancy, but I haven't thought about it since the delivery since he seemed healthy. He still seems healthy to me. I don't think he's slow. I know that he still can't really lift his head up very well, but it's so big, and he's getting better at it. I looked back at the questionnaire that they had me fill out, and I could have given him some more points on some of the questions. The possiblity that Chris could have developmental problems was completely unexpected. I mean, I'm a doctor and Doug is a rocket scientist! He should be brilliant! Regardless of how things turn out, he's still my beautiful baby and we will love him just the same. Hopefully this was just a blip, an erroneous questionnaire.

4 months

Chris is four months old today. We're going to start trying to get him to self soothe and go to sleep on his own, putting him down in his crib while he's still a little awake. I did that for his nap this morning, and he finally cried himself to sleep. No peeps on the baby monitor now. I want to use the Ferber method, while Doug is more of a fan of "cry it out". I just want Chris to know that he hasn't been abandoned! He has his four month doctor's appointment tomorrow. I'm on my own this week as Doug is in Cape Canaveral for work.

vitamin towel

Chris wears a towel for vitamin administration, as the infant vitamin drops are green and stain clothing. He doesn't like wearing the towel.

bigger

It seems like Chris grew bigger overnight. I dressed him in his new six month old size clothes and they fit well other than the sleeves being a little long. He is starting to have a round belly, although he's still skinny. Yesterday I had a mommy moment- Chris managed to direct a jet of spit up down the neck of my shirt, into my bra, and down my cleavage.

snow