The K Train: 1 Month Checkup

Today was the day that I have been dreading for a while – the 1 month checkup. I was dreading it because I hear they get their second hepatitis shot and this brings a lot of mothers to tears. So going to the doctor I was already feeling a little anxious.

BUT it turned out to be great and M was such a big boy! Here are his stats:

Weight: 10 lbs 2.5 ounces

Height: 23.75 inches

Head circumference:

He did awesome with his shots. He cried just a little bit but then he was over it like two seconds later. He also has something that they call “thrush.” This is where they have little white patches on the roof of their mouths and on their tongues. The doctor said this was very common and gave us some meds but she didn’t really go into it after that. So I went home to do a little research. Thrush is basically a yeast infection and is caused by several things. One way is due to a hormonal imbalance right after birth that triggers an overproduction of yeast in your baby’s mouth. It can also be caused by the antibiotics that you take after birth. If you’re breastfeeding, these antibiotics kill off the “good” bacteria in the baby’s mouth that keep the yeast in check. (For more information on thrush, please refer to this article I found on BabyCenter: http://www.babycenter.com/0_thrush-in-babies_92.bc)

The other thing I wanted the doctor to look at is his “face acne.” The past week he had what we were thinking was face acne but lately it has gotten so bad and it has spread to his back and chest. It also gets really red if he’s outside or gets too hot. There was so much of it that we thought maybe it was a rash that was being aggravated by our clothes or his clothes but that didn’t make a lot of sense because it just now started showing up and we wash all of his stuff in baby detergent. Our doctor asked another physician to come in to check and they both agreed that it was just a bad case of baby acne and should go away in a couple of weeks. POOR BABY!! But they did say that it wasn’t hurting him at all and he was doing great. How we fix this? You can’t fix acne but they told us to wipe him off with a cool rag if he’s sweating or outside and to only bath him every other day with no lotion.

He is growing SOO much! Since I haven’t blogged a lot lately, I just thought I’d do a brief update on the many things I missed updating this past month:

M is now sleeping around 4-5 hours at night which makes things a lot easier. And he is sleeping great in his crib.

Right now we have officially stopped doing breastmilk and gone full time to formula. I stand by my earlier statement and wish I would have asked for another lactation specialist. After seeing her, my breastfeeding went terrible. I was trying so hard to do it the “right way” that I was stressing out which in turn made M stressed and frustrated. So for a while I was pumping whenever he ate. Well, that didn’t last either because it was such a pain to do. Our end result was that we just went to formula. Our doctors have all been really supportive about it and have made me feel so comfortable with this decision. I totally envy all of the ladies that make it work breastfeeding because it was seriously one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Another first that happened... Cutting his finger and not the fingernail. M’s nails were getting really long and had started to cut his face with them. The doctor’s kept telling me that I needed to file them down. However, I’ve read several places and heard from a lot of friends that you could either bite them or clip them with fingernail clippers. I was trying to file them down but the little bugger kept moving! I knew that he had a pair of baby clippers in his First Aid kit so I went to get those to try. Well, they have this application thing on the bottom of it and it makes it really hard to see if you’re on the nail or not. I wasn’t on the nail and ended up clipping the skin on his finger. At first I didn’t think I clipped it but he started crying and then went to his second level. When I looked at his finger I saw it was bleeding. Then there were tears. Lots of them. From both Mason and me. Josh was sitting on the couch and didn’t know who to comfort first. So he ended up putting his arms around both of us until we were out of tears. Best daddy ever. I have now vowed to always file his nails down (sigh)

Here are a few pics to leave you with: