Verity Update

Verity had a well-baby appointment yesterday.  She's almost 11 months, so this is a weird time to have one, but I realized that as soon classes start up for us, it is going to be next-to-impossible for me to make it to Bethesda until January, so I thought I might as well get her in now.  Driving there yesterday morning brought back flashbacks to a year ago, when I was going 3 times a week for stress tests and appointments.  I don't miss that at all!

Traffic was crazy, so although we left at 8:45, we didn't get there until 10:10.  Maybe 10:09, which is an important distinction because the check-in lady informed me that I had made it there in the nick of time, since their brand spankin new late policy gives a 10 minute grace period for lateness, and then your appointment is cancelled.  Whew!  I would have been mad if the appointment was cancelled, simply because of so much wasted time (25 minutes in the parking garage alone!!), but I just wouldn't have come back.

Verity was a well baby indeed.  She has plumped up to 18 pounds, 2 ounces, which puts her in the 20th percentile.  The doctor (who we've never seen before) was plotting all this out, and she said, "Well, she's fine now, weight-wise, but she was fine back here too--I don't know why they kept having you come back in" as she pointed to the 7th percentile appointment back in February.  Yes, thank you very much.  Grrr.

I did tell her how irritated I was by the whole thing because Verity is no longer nursing.  By the time we went to Texas in June, she was only reliably nursing in the morning, and maybe one more time a day.  While we were in Ohio, she nursed for the last time the morning before we left.  Since then, she has just happily been not the slightest bit interested in nursing.  No big deal, I suppose--except this is my last baby, and I wasn't planning on stopping nursing until a year at least!  And I know she got a whole lot less interested in nursing the more the bottle was pushed on her.  As it turns out, now that she is eating table food instead of baby food, she has chunked up, although she probably would have been more in the 10-15th percentile in she wasn't on the bottle.  But she wouldn't have been any less healthy!!  Gah.  So annoying!

It is weird to be totally done with nursing and pregnancy things.  I got pregnant the end of September 1996 with Nathan, so it's been almost 19 years of my life.  There were a little over 2 years total in that time period where I was not pregnant or nursing.  It's definitely been what has defined my life for the past 19 years!  It's hard to just have it be done.  Ah well, I still have diapers.  Ha!

Anyway, the appointment went well, the doctor was super-nice, and I felt vindicated.  Verity toddled happily around the room, chatting up a storm.  She was so happy--maybe because the doctor said she couldn't get any shots until after she turns 1.  And since I won't be able to get back there until January, she's off the hook for awhile!