Friday, September 22, 2006
Natalie's Nine Month Well-Baby Check-Up
Natalie had her well baby check-up today. This was her first with the doctor in the area I'm now in. I'm not impressed. First thing she did was ask me why I didn't want to vaccinate and then tried to scare me with stories of people in her family who died from now-vaccinated for diseases. She also told me that certain things I heard to be true were not true and that kind of thing. Finally, she gave me a book she wanted me to read about vaccinations. It was written by someone in the CDC and a pediatrician. I read the first sentence and wanted to gag. It touts vaccinations as basically the best thing to happen in medicine. Oh boy, this doctor must think I'm stupid. I'm not impressed. She seemed to know what she was doing otherwise but I miss Natalie's pediatrician; he didn't treat me like an idiot and he knew how to give information without using scare tactics. I mean, this woman basically said, "I would hate for something to happen to your child because you didn't vaccinate." OH...MY...GOODNESS... Um, if that was supposed to make me want to vaccinate my child, she failed miserably. I mean COME ON!So she goes through everything else, tells me how to get Natalie to sleep through the night (a book by Ferber of which several copies can be found at the local library for parents to read) and gives me some sample of Motrin. She then tells me that Natalie needs a finger poke for iron and lead levels. Fortunately Natalie does very well; she does not cry with the poking but does eventually get mad being held down for so long. After more than a hour there, I'm finally on my way. Currently Natalie is 18 lbs and 7 oz and 27 inches tall. I also get a prescription for Nystatin for Natalie's yeast rash (even though in the past I've used the yeast infection stuff, this doctor says that I can't because it's not approved for babies).
Back at home, I get a call from the doctor. Natalie's iron levels are low. The lowest the doctor wants to see them is 11, hers are 10.9 so she wants Natalie either to be on iron drops or eating her rice cereal more often. sigh I'm not going back to this woman unless I have to. I know my sister likes her but I don't; I'm just not too impressed with her. Dang it, I miss Natalie's doctor. He's got five kids and his youngest is 11 days older than Natalie so he knows firsthand the stage she's at now. I was hoping to grab an appointment while I was visiting my younger sister but I didn't get a chance. Now, I've got to try and find a doctor I actually feel comfortable with. Ugh. That just sucks.
That's been pretty much it for that. Her ears are looking good (ear infection cleared up) and again, we discussed the sleep thing a bit since Natalie is really fighting that. She was a great sleeper up until I moved down here and then it all went out the window. I've been having her get herself to sleep (I don't like it but sometimes, that's the only way to get her to sleep, otherwise, I don't get to do anything else) and when she wakes up at night, I'll bring her to bed. Well, this isn't working because she tends to wake up quite a bit at night. Last night was really bad. She was up at 1am, SCREAMING her head off. I don't know if it was her tooth cutting or not but I was out of tylenol so I couldn't do anything about it. My older sister took over for awhile and let me go sleep on the couch. I really appreciated that; she had just come home from work too. This whole thing is just really hard on both of us and I miss John a lot and want our family back. I HATE this. Anyway, she's got one tooth now and I think another one is working it's way through so it's only a matter of time. Her first tooth is definitely in though; she bit me tonight for the first time--OUCH!
As for walking...not quite yet. She's getting really good at standing on her own and I think she's getting closer to taking that first step but she just doesn't quite have the confidence to do it yet. She's got pretty good balance though so I think she'll do it soon. Otherwise, she has fun cruising around the bedroom and livingroom and wherever else I'll let her cruise around. She crawls too and is quite quick, especially when it gets her to trouble. She's a little stinker, that's for sure! She's smart too and my older sister thinks she's not only smart but smart beyond her age and maybe even gifted. To me, she's Natalie! I've always wanted a smart child; I mean heck, I know I'm intelligent and John is too, but it almost seems like my sister is saying she's smarter than that; and that makes me nervous. My dad was almost genius level; I'm not sure I could handle a child smarter than me! It's a scary thought because I know how mentally messed up my dad was too. I'm not going to worry about it though because it's not going to be an issue for awhile, if it becomes an issue. I'm just going to enjoy my sweet little girl who's mischievously smart.
| posted by Janeen at 11:28 PM
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Tami of BrooksGroth had this to say:
What a wonderful update! Well, except the part about the dumb doctor. Be sure to read up on iron and breastfeeding (I think kelleymom.com (?) has some good stuff. From what I remember off the top of my head rice cereal near the time of nursing is not good because now only is the iron in it not very easily absorbed and constipating but if eaten in close proximity to nursing it blocks the absorbtion of the iron in breastmilk. If breastmilk is the perfect food then maybe our standards of "ideal" levels of iron for babies are off ??? Know what I mean. If she seems to be doing well to you, I would SO not worry about it!
{{{hugs}}} on the sleep thing -- no real advice on that though.
Tami
