Two-Month Checkup

Gemma had her two-month checkup this morning. Overall, she is doing well. The prevacid is pretty much working miracles with her acid reflux - like I mentioned in an earlier post, she's back to her old self again - we hadn't realized just how much the reflux was affecting every aspect of her life. She weighed right at 10 lbs. and was 22 inches long. I don't remember her head size, but her head and her weight were both in the 25th percentile and her length was around the 40th (which we found surprising, as she is half Shealy - we were expecting lower than that).

Feeding Gemma is still a work in progress unfortunately. I am trying to wean off breastfeeding, so am spacing out my pumping sessions further and further apart. I fed Gemma her first bottle of formula yesterday, and though she did not seem to like it at first, eventually she ate 2 oz. Unfortunately, it appears she has an allergy to the cow's milk based formula. A couple of hours after she ate the formula, she broke out in hives on her arms and right around her mouth. All around her mouth and chin was swollen and red and splotchy. She was also extra fussy yesterday afternoon. I couldn't think of anything else that might have caused her to break out, so I didn't feed her any more formula, and the hives went away by bedtime last night. (As an aside, speaking of bedtime last night, she pretty much slept through the night. We put her down around 8:30 or so and at 4:15 Cy heard her making some noises so he got up and fed her, but she probably would have kept on sleeping because she wasn't awake and didn't act terribly hungry. I got to sleep until 5:30, and couldn't believe how amazing a full night's rest felt.) Anyway. . .we talked to the pediatrician about the allergic reaction and he definitely agreed that it sounded like an allergy to the formula. He gave us a can of soy-based formula to try. Hopefully that will work, and hopefully we will get it sorted out before my milk totally dries up.

It was kind of funny at our appointment - Dr. Traynham always goes on and on about how beautiful Gemma is, so today I said, "You probably say that about all the girl babies." He adamantly said no, and said, "I can't tell someone their baby is ugly though, so a lot of times I'll say something like, 'What a cute outfit!'" I thought that was pretty hilarious. He also said he met with an expectant couple the other day who told him they are planning to name their baby Gemma. He said he told them that they had some pretty big shoes to fill, because he knew a Gemma already and she is one of the cutest babies he's ever met!

So her checkup went really well. Unfortunately, she had to get three shots though. They gave her an oral vaccine first, and she didn't like it and started crying. Then they gave her the first of the shots and my poor sweet little baby cried harder than I have ever heard her cry. By the time she had gotten all three shots, I was crying too. I know it is good for her and she needed the shots, but it was just so awful to see her in pain. I felt like a horrible mother for inflicting pain on my child, even if it was ultimately for her benefit. But she calmed down fairly quickly, and by the time we got home, she was smiling and talking and kicking her legs around, so that made me feel better. Hopefully she will not have any adverse reactions to the shots and will be feeling back to herself again quickly.