Verity Update

Today was another weight check, this time with a completely different doctor.  I was prepared today, however.  For one thing, I brought Grace and Faith with me, as evidence of skinny, healthy children.  Also I printed off 0-36 month growth charts and filled them in for Luke, Anna, Grace, and Faith.  They all showed that between 3 and 6 months, my kids drop down to a (much) lower growth percentile line.  Grace's was the worst--she went from the 60th percentile at 2 months down to below the 5th percentile at 7 months, and she continued on that line until at least 20 months.

You may wonder how I have weight data for all these kids for their first years.  I had the good fortune to start keeping a "baby's first year" calendar with Nathan.  These are blank calendars where you fill in the date blocks for each month, and you can write on the days or put stickers on or whatever.  These calendars come with some "first year" stickers like first bath, first tooth, starts crawling, etc.  There are so much easier than a traditional baby book--just jot down the weight when you come back from a doctor appointment, or write down some special thing in a square.  Easy peasy!  You used to be able to buy these in stores, but for the last several (4 maybe?) I've just had to order them from Amazon.  I don't know why they aren't more popular!  I now have a little keepsake for each baby that they can look back at if they are curious when they got their first tooth or started walking or whatever.  Or I can look back at when I need to chart their weight gain, LOL.

So anyhow, I was totally prepared for the doctor.  Verity is up to 14 pounds, 3 ounces, which is the 9th percentile, up from the 7th percentile.  The doctor thought that was great and told me to keep doing what I was doing.  I told her that I had been forcing food on Verity, and now she has even started spitting up some, and I was actually quite uncomfortable making her eat when she obviously wasn't hungry.  The doctor said I should just let her eat until she's done, but not worry about getting anything extra in her, which is good because that is what I have been doing.  Good grief!  Then the doctor said it was obvious that our family growth pattern was big babies who thin down between 3 and 6 months.  Well, yes, obviously--or maybe it's a metabolic disease?!    Actually, it's just like I've been saying--my babies are very active at an early age, and they have high metabolisms.  Once they start moving around, they lose weight for a little while until everything evens out.  It's really not such a bad thing to have a high metabolism!

So this doctor was totally unconcerned, and I could tell she was actually a little puzzled as to why we were in there, since Verity was such an obviously healthy baby, LOL.  We don't go back until 9 months.  Hopefully I can get the same doctor then (*making a note of her name on the calendar*) . . .

Verity has been really getting strong!  Last night she got herself up to sitting, which made her so proud of herself!  She's also now able to roll from back to front at will.  She has done it before, but it was more of a lucky accident, where everything just happened to come together at the right now.  This afternoon she was playing with this crib toy that used to be my cousin's back in the day--a certifiable antique, LOL!  We have it attached to the posts in our upper hallway railing.

After playing with everything for a little while, she pulled herself to standing!  Big girl!