Gavin @ 6 Months

We took Gavin in to see Dr. K this afternoon for his 6 month appointment.

The timing was excellent because he fell off the bed in the morning (under my watch) and bashed up his face. While he handled the fall quite well, I was a wreck, frantically googling "baby fall bed" and "baby head injury", trying to decide if I could go to work or if we needed to take him to Urgent Care.

(In this picture from the evening, the GIANT lump of his head has disappeared, leaving only the nasty scrapes on his poor little nose.)

I have to say that I was a bit relieved when the doctor's office called and asked up if we would mind moving Gavin's appointment earlier in the afternoon.

Anyway, Gavin is fine. According to Dr. K. if you are going to fall on your head, falling on the front is best. And she commiserated with us on the early crawling.

Gavin weighed in at 17 lbs 11 oz and was 27". That put him in the 70% for height and the 53% for weight. He head circumference was 17.25" (51%). And on track with his developmental milestones.

We talked a bit about starting solids. Even though he has hit the "magic" age of 6 months, I don't think he is quite ready. I'm not seeing many of the signs that indicate readiness. His head control is excellent, but he can't sit up by himself (he would much rather crawl than anything else). And he doesn't seem interested in the food that we eat. (Which makes me remember Riley, who used to watch us eat with ravenous eyes.)

For now, we are going to wait on adding food to his diet. I may start getting him used to the spoon with some breast milk slushies.

The one caveat that Dr. K mentioned is that, given Riley's asthma, Gavin has a higher risk for food allergies/sensitivities. So we should be waiting 4 to 5 days between introducing new foods. That is going to be hard - it is just a little more precision that I feel capable of. I need to do some research - Riley's asthma seems to be clearly triggered by respiratory infection (be it viral or bacterial), so I'm not sure if being careful about food makes sense.

Gavin also got the combo pentacel vaccine and a seasonal flu vaccine. The pentacel was a bit more vaccine than I wanted, but I really wanted him to him to have the HIB. I normally don't give the flu vaccine to my babies their first winter. But I haven't been able to get one this year - there are huge shortages of both the seasonal flu and the H1N1 vaccine in our area. (There was either massive corruption or massive incompetence involved in the vaccine distribution for our county. I'm not sure which is better.) Dr. K. did tell us that Riley was on the list for an H1N1 vaccine as soon as the next batch came in. Gavin handled the shots almost as well as his brother. There was a little bit of crying and then he was back to smiles.