Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Two Month Well Baby Visit

We had our 2 month ped appt this morning and Jonah is up over 15 lbs (phew that its not more than that) but it's still a doubling since our last appt at 2 weeks. He's measuring in the 90th percentile for head circ., 95th for length and above 95th for weight -- he was average all around at delivery.

We opted to do two shots today, polio as it is less reactive and HIB. The HIB shot really hurt him going in at the office but a few hours later he was screaming at home in pain and his thigh was all swollen. He's been crying since then, but mostly sleeping. I couldn't help cry when I saw him hurting so -- it really was awful. We've trained Jonah by being attentive so that he doesn't need to cry for us to respond. The crying this afternoon just made me want to thow up. He starting to smile and coo again now.

It was just awful watching him crying in pain and not being able to console him though. If I held him it would hurt him and if I put him down he got upset. I ended up laying him on my bed with his head on my pillow with two diaper flats laid out beneath him as fastening the cloth diaper would hit his injury. I held his hand and he fell asleep but would wake periodically and cry, especially when he would kick his legs (his favorite thing to do, even in utero) as it hurt. Awful, awful. I'm still recovering.

We opted to do our own schedule for the vaccinations as the CDC recommendations are designed to try to get as many people to complete the shot series as soon as possible so they don't miss them, but they are based on babies in childcare, etc. Since Jonah's at home and not around many other children -- we feel comfortable doing our own schedule to reduce the possible overload of introducing so many foreign proteins and preservatives into his system at once. I read that from a TCM standpoint you ideally would only introduce them one at a time -- but obviously getting one shot each time means more trauma over time so that's a bit extreme.