this little man had his two month checkup today, and it was a traumatic experience for all involved. let me just say this - vaccinations suck. i mean, i'm sure they're preferable to the various bacterial and viral infections they're protecting him against, but it sucks to hold your baby still (or try to, anyway) while a nurse pokes him repeatedly with a needle (actually, 4 different needles, not the same needle over and over). especially when he starts emitting high-pitched screams as soon as the first needle pokes him, and then he proceeds to turn purple and stop breathing for a few seconds between said high-pitched screams (but with his face still scrunched up like he's screaming, only silently), and this continues well after the poking and injecting are through.
the rotavirus vaccine was ok - it was given by mouth, and max thought it was pretty tasty.
other than the pain and screaming from the injections, max's doctor's appointment went well. he's 23 inches, 11 lbs. 8 oz. now (so he's gaining about an ounce a day). that puts him in the 50th percentile for size compared to other two-month old babies, and his height and weight are still in perfect proportion, so i guess he's not going to be one of those super-chubby babies covered in cute little fat rolls. my brother was one of those babies. i was not. oh well. it just means that max will be able to wear all his clothes for a long time instead of growing out of them practically overnight, despite his fairly rapid growth rate.
something else to mention is max's teeny tiny little head. it doesn't look tiny. i think it looks huge (well, compared to how small it was when he first popped out) and in good proportion with his body. but his head circumference (38 cm) is only in the 10th percentile. so 90% of two month old babies have bigger heads than max!
his tiny head isn't a bad thing, though. he's doing everything he's supposed to be able to do at this age - and some things that a lot of three month old babies can't do yet (like bat at toys on purpose, roll onto their sides, and hold their heads steady for long periods of time). by his next checkup at 4 months, max will be able to roll all the way over onto his tummy and grasp objects and put them in his mouth. he already coos and babbles up a storm, and he smiles at us frequently. overall, he's a pretty happy kid.
i must say, his sleeping habits have also improved dramatically. for the past four or five nights, max has been sleeping for a minimum of 5 hours at a time after i lay him down in the crib. when he wakes up at 4 or 5:00 a.m., he doesn't want to go back to sleep, but 5 consecutive hours of sleep are much better than 5 or 6 interrupted hours of sleep. and last night, max pretty much slept all night! for the first time! and i was worried when i woke up at 5:35 (all by my lonesome, not because i heard a noise) and realized that max hadn't made a peep yet! and we'd gone to bed at 11:00. so i had to get up and check on him. and he was snoozing away in his crib, perfectly fine. then he got whiny at 5:45, so i went ahead and got up with him. it was pretty crazy, waking up on my own instead of to a crying baby. it's been forever since that happened - like since before max was born.
he's even sleeping right now. he's slept an awful lot today, actually. i think it's all those shots. fever is a common side effect of three out of five vaccines he received today, and pain/swelling at the injection site is common in two of them (only one looks swollen, though). the rotavirus vaccine can sometimes cause diarrhea or vomiting, but so far so good. the doc advised me to go ahead and give him some infant tylenol when we got home, and i just gave him another dose, so we're pretty much trying to preempt any fever that might develop (and relieve the pain in the poor baby's legs). he's been a little fussy, but mostly max has just been sleepy today. he should be pretty much back to normal by tomorrow night.
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