Lazy, Long Cool Drink of Water

Henry had a pediatrician appointment this morning. We saw a new pediatrician which i'll tell you about in another night's post. We had quite awhile to just get to know the new Dr. and get her up-to-date on Henry and his sordid past. The good news is that now he's in the 75% percentile for length, the bad news is that he basically hasn't gained any weight since 6 months. Or, as the Dr. said, he's a "long cool drink of water."

Now Henry is a Bloch, and if you've met many of the Blochs you'll know that they tend to the long and skinny side of things. That said, the Dr. wants us to up Henry's milk supply and introduce a number of other calorie dense foods into his diet. We're supposed to go back in two weeks to check his weight. The Dr. wasn't alarming and had several helpful concrete solutions which was essential for me feeling okay about the situation. The biggest thing is that i'm supposed to increase his bottles from 5-6 oz to 8 oz. Also, after he finishes breast feeding i'm supposed to offer him a small bottle to see if he'll take anymore. I tried that twice today and he took a bit but was pretty quickly disinterested. I'll most likely need to supplement with formula since i haven't been pumping anywhere near 24 oz a day. I was hoping to make it to the year mark without formula, but as the Doc said, what's most important now is that he get additional calories. So, we've got some formula samples to try with Henry over the weekend. I've heard a lot of breast-fed babies don't really like formula because it tastes different, here's hoping Henry's open-embrace of all food continues.

The Doc also said that we need to put Henry on his stomach and back more. She said that for some babies, as they get really good at sitting, they get lazy and don't have much motivation to try out new positions or get moving. So, even if he protests we're supposed to build tummy-time back in. I did two sessions today and we made some progress. The first only lasted about 5 minutes, but the second went up to over 10-- in part because i bribed the cat to stay just out of Henry's reach; there was also a lot of clapping involved.

So we've got marching orders and as soon as i can get a little better (and the snow storm abates) i'll head to the store to stock up on all of Henry's new food and feeding implements.