(no subject)

[rivka]

Poor Alex is having a rough day. Today was her two-month "well baby" visit to the pediatrician, which meant four - count 'em, four - immunizations. Diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hemophilus influenzae, pneumococcus, hepatitis, polio. "I can't promise that it won't hurt," said her pediatrician, "but I can promise to be quick." And then he jabbed her four times with sharp needles, while Michael and I held her hands and kept her pacifier in her mouth and talked to her reassuringly. She turned purple with crying. Poor little girl. She settled down afterwards with cuddling and more pacifier sucking, and later fell asleep in the supermarket. But this evening she kept up a steady, unhappy, uncomfortable whining cry. Clearly not her fault - hey, I remember how much the tetanus shot hurts afterward, from my own last booster shot. Of course it's too much for a little baby to handle.

Now she is sleeping in my lap, in the sling, thanks to the sweet cherry relief of Children's Tylenol. Don't you think "Sweet Cherry Relief" would be a good name for a band?

The rest of the exam went stunningly well. Her pediatrician is delighted with her growth and development. She has "excellent muscle tone for her age," he said - he predicted early walking. She's in the 60th percentile for weight (eleven pounds even) and the 75th percentile for length. He walked us through some of the upcoming developmental milestones, which I already knew about but appreciated anyway. And he struck precisely the right note about the end of breastfeeding: recognition that it was very important to me and that stopping was not an easy decision, appreciation of the degree of effort I put in, and assurance that we made the right decision. I asked whether the amount I'm currently pumping (8oz per day) makes any medical difference to the baby, and he said yes, it definitely does. So I'll keep pumping for the forseeable future.

The neatest thing about being Alex's mother these days is the increasing amount of time she spends awake, alert, and content. In her early weeks, for the most part she was only awake if she needed something. Now she spends a significant portion of her day awake and happy, or awake and interested in her surroundings. In church last Sunday, she spent most of the service sitting upright in her sling and looking quietly around. At the doctor's office today, she let the doctor examine her without crying at all - she just watched him, or looked at us, or examined the big Danish flag on the wall. (Each exam room has a country theme.) Oftentimes, when I'm holding her in my lap she'll just watch me quietly, studying my face as I read or talk to her or write e-mails. And of course, she's engaging her toys with joy and verve. She's so much more there, these days. It's just lovely.

Comments

[windsea.livejournal.com]

{{both of you}}

I know exactly what you mean by a *there* baby. It is wonderful, isn't it?

Yes, needles suck, but so does losing a child to, say, diphtheria (like my grandfather's younger brother, at age 12). I'm a big immunization/innoculation fan, possibly because my grandmother had my mom relatively late, and my mum had me relatively late ... so my grandmother was born in the 1880s. My own memories include people who experienced the carnage, and I use the word advisedly, of the years before antibiotics and immunizations.

I note this in case anyone comes down on you for having Alex vaccinated. I'll be happy to fill in my family's blanks if you would like someone to talk to :-)

Enjoy her. That's the main thing.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

My mother has always displayed an infant portrait of her aunt, who died at age two from diphtheria. And both of my parents remember being forbidden to go swimming in the summer for fear of polio. My mother says that her hometown paper printed a box every day listing the number of new polio cases.

No thanks.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I just watched my first episode of House the other night, and the plot hunged on childhood vaccinations. Very timely.

I actually just found out that my father had polio as a child. Somehow I never knew this. (My father ain't much for telling childhood stories, but you still think it would have come up!)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Hinged. Damnit.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Your father? Holy cow. Yeah, that certainly does seem like the sort of thing that would come up. Presumably he doesn't have any postpolio symptoms?

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

It actually came up because he was trying to ascertain if some medical stuff he has going on now could be post-polio symptoms. He was asking my grandmother questions about it, but she didn't remember much (she's sort of... in and out mentally sometimes), and so then he asked my great-aunt, who is the only other person who might have been around then. She didn't know much either. All I know is that it was respiratory polio, when he was about 5 or 6, and he was not put in an iron lung.

Really, this just illustrates how non-communicative my father is. And his whole family.

[eeyorerin]

My father had polio as a child, when he was three, the year before the vaccinations went into wide-spread trials. You wouldn't notice that he had it unless you happened to observe that the dimensions of his upper arms are two different sizes -- some of the muscles in his left arm just never recovered, and he favors his right arm. My grandmother used to talk often about how desperately difficult it was to leave her baby in the hospital with and not know if he was going to come back home or not.

No thank you, indeed.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Geez, you'd think the jokes on "Sweet Cherry Relief" would just write themselves, but not if you're the kind of person who wants to avoid the cheap and easy shots.

(What's that? You're saying you know damn well I'm *not* the kind who avoids the cheap and easy shots? Well, okay, so I'm unimaginative today; I'm trying to convince myself I have a hope in hell - that's a pun, there, though it's not obvious - of shifting the course of nearly 100 years of a religious movement.)

I'm glad you're still able to breast feed her, albeit indirectly, to some extent.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

It looks like your guess wasn't too far off on the walking thing, eh? Very cool.

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It was supposed to be a joke, damn it!

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

What a cutie!

[ailbhe]

It's so nice to read such a positive-feeling post, even if it is about those awful, awful immunisations - Linnea got a great red LUMP on her leg after one of them. So sad! I'm glad you're both feeling so much better. I assume your mastitis has cleared up, since you haven't mentioned it and it's been ages and ages.

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

Surely the growth of a new person is a real miracle :-)

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

The photos don't lie - she is definitely one of the most alert, watchful babies I have ever met. And so cute!! :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Your pediatrican sounds wonderful, as usual. That is an excellent developmental report and weight gain!

What did you decide to do about the Zantac/reflux, now that she is eating comfortably and responding differently to feeds?

I am so glad you can continue to pump some breastmilk. When I stopped, I dried up within days.

In my experience, babies might need tylenol for comfort even the day after they have had immunizations. Did she get a fever? That can be pretty common.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We decided to continue the Zantac until her four-month visit, and then re-evaluate. She's doing so well, it seems a shame to mess with it.

No fever from the vaccines, just fussiness. Today she's perfectly fine.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

I think they have a single shot that combines a bunch of the early childhood vaxes (in addition to DTaP). They developed it so they didn't have to stick the babies quite so many times at each visit - perhaps you can ask about that for next time?

We're on a delayed schedule for Liam, so he never gets more than 2 shots at a visit, and as he's gotten older and more aware, the second one is getting harder. I can't imagine trying to do four separate shots.

I'm glad to hear she's growing and developing well.

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Squeeky has always been big on alertness and not letting anything get past her; unfortunately she'd take it to the degree that she didn't want to sleep because she knew the party would start right afterwards!

Pumping is definitely harder than regular breastfeeding, and I just wanted to applaud you for your hard work to give your kid the edge. It's not easy, but you're doing it.

[zencuppa.livejournal.com]

Post-shot grumpyiness (sp) -

I started giving Nick a dose of Tylenol about 20 minutes *before* the shot, so that neither of us would have to *wait* for it to work, so he'd feel better.

We also choose to not get more than two shots for any appointment, and make it up with separate nurse visits. Yeah, it's time consuming but we just don't see the reason for flooding our kids with so many vaccinations at once. (Not a suggestion per se, but another parent's approach and reasoning.)

As a baby, our second child was calm and attentive like your little one. At one and a half, he's still incredibly sweet-tempered but making up for quietness *wry grin.*

[boxofdelights]

Your pede will probably give you a prescription for or a sample of EMLA (topical anesthetic cream) before the next round of shots if you ask. It only numbs the pain of the needle going through the skin -- it doesn't do anything about the burn the vaccine itself may cause, or the post-vaccination aches and fever -- but I think it's worth it. If you opt for this, get the nurse to show you what areas to cover with the cream.