Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Hannah is Four Months Old!!

...and a half!! I, personally, cannot believe she is possibly that old already, but she is. That goes without saying, she had her four month check up yesterday. She was 23 1/4" and 10 pounds, 13 oz. The other day someone asked how big she was and I guessed between 10-11 pounds. I was right, it turns out.

Everyone always says she is tiny, and she is. I often think it is unfair, though, to compare an exclusively breastfed baby to, say, a completely formula fed baby - or even one who is breastfed and supplemented with formula. Almost all of the breastfed babies I know tend to be a tad on the tinier side. Of course, they do not make charts that doctors regularly use for this purpose (they make them - most doctors don't use them). I must also say that, in my defense, I was always tiny - until my teens. Even then, I was a "normal" weight and didn't become heavy until I was 23 years old (due to lovely PCOS). She comes by her smallness naturally.

She, of course, like all of my children dropped off the chart. She was 25th percentile or something and now she is down around 5th or so. In her defense, everything dropped...not just her weight. It just seems most doctors are not prepared for that, but all of my children have started out normal to bigger and tend to end up somewhere on the smaller side. Thankfully, our doctor isn't a real nervous type, so he is happy to just wait and see what happens. Her drop on the chart was more dramatic than most of my kids - but it was right in line with what Austin did. He dropped just as drastically, if not more so, between his four and six month appointments. I am hoping that Hannah will now level out and if she follows the pattern of four out of five of her brothers, she will.

Developmentally, she's doing great. She isn't rolling, but I'm not concerned. She flips herself onto her side for everything - sleep included - she just won't take the final little descent into the roll. She smiles at everyone, she is such a happy baby. She talks non-stop. I do not know what we are going to do when both her and Noah are talking...I'm doomed (it's probably pay-back)! She grabs onto her toys and has even started to turn them in her hands and get them into her mouth. She is constantly inspecting her hands, also. She holds her head up fabulously and she is constantly wiggling (probably why she can't keep any weight on!). She's doing everything she's supposed to be except rolling.

I was also told we can start cereal now, if we want, but we will not. I don't like to start anything until 6-8 months. Aidan didn't have anything until almost 9 months. I can't imagine trying to get her to actually eat anything yet - she just doesn't seem like she should be ready for any of that. Although she does like to sit at the dinner table with us and already has her own high chair. The boys have been using the high chairs as chairs (no seat) for the last several months, so we just added a booster seat to the other side of the table. Now they take turns sitting in the booster seat. So far, there have been no fights.

Tomorrow, the AEA is coming to our house for observation number 2 on the boys. I'll update when I know more!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Trista-
You know, mine were exclusively breastfed until solids were introduced, but they were always huge, between 18-20 lbs at 4 months! so breastfed babies can go either way, but I think you should go with your gut and you know that you were tiny and your boys were tiny and you can tell she is happy, healthy, developing and not starving, so don't worry yourself. I know several people IRL, my sister included, who had tiny kids and they were just fine, it was genetics!
Hannah is SOOOOOOO cute! love those big eyes! boy, time goes so fast!
see you on the groups! :-)
Nicole Grimes