Robin's 9 Month Well Baby Visit

We had our well baby visit today for Robin. I was hoping he would have gained more but I'm not surprised that he only gained what he did because he's been crawling for a month now and before that he was still pretty mobile and speedy. I call this "activity related minimal gain" ha ha ha. The doctor agrees.

Weight: 13 lbs 8 oz
Height: 26 3/4 inches
Head: 17 something...I can't remember what was on the sheet but it definitely grew enough to make them happy.

We discussed diet and they recommended to get as much breastmilk in him as possible and to not let food take the place of my milk. She actually said this to me first and I was so happy because I'm 100% in line with how she is thinking. Basically, keep nursing him and use food in addition. And try to get the foods as calorie dense as possible. Avocados, some egg yolks in a month or two, some olive oil mixed in his cereal...

She said I could try adding a little plain whole milk yogurt. No liquid cow's milk. Not until a year, and even then if he's still nursing it's better to keep him on the breastmilk. It has a lot more fat and calories than even whole cow's milk. This is stuff we knew already, though. For whatever reason, the plain yogurt doesn't have the tummy concerns that liquid cow's milk has. I think I might give him a small spoonful and see how his tummy does. We usually have plain yogurt in the house.

His iron was excellent. He's doing great with table foods. He can eat lots of things cubed (plain veggies and soft fruits mostly). She was very impressed that he could eat with his hands already and that he was so mobile.

She said that because his head size and his height were going up along a nice curve, that's really the biggest indicator of nutrition and health. His weight may just hit a spurt one of these days. But if not, he's still healthy and growing as a baby his size should.

The best thing is that it looks like his ear infection has almost nearly cleared up. Which is great because I didn't want to have to put him on more antibiotic. He's so miserable on it.

We discussed vaccines again because some of the ones that concern me are coming up at his next appointment. She's going to give some of my research to one of his pediatricians, who is also doing his own research on the issue. I'm hoping they can order one of the alternative MMR vaxes for us. At the very least, I know I'll be going into the appointment having done everything I could in terms of finding an alternative.