Maybe He's Been Sipping My Coffee

Today was Mason's nine month checkup, which was fairly uneventful. They offered us some shots, we said no. They did a little finger prick to test his iron and hemoglobin levels. I held Mason tightly and braced myself as the nurse cleaned off his little finger with alcohol (I totally felt for him since I hate having my finger pricked; it hurts worse than a shot anyday). I turned around and stared at George instead of Mason. I just couldn't look. I waited. And waited. And peeked over my shoulder as the nurse was squeezing the blood into little tubes. It was over. He didn't even make a peep. Toughy.

Now, for some odd reason, being weighed and measured was a whole different story. When they laid him down on the table you would have thought he was being tortured. In his defense, I can see tooth number two hiding right below his gums so I'm pretty sure it'll be poking its way through in the next few days, but he still looked so pitiful sitting on the scale, bottom lip protruding. Anyway, this all leads up to the issue that's been bugging me all day.

Let's look at the stats:

Birth: 7lbs - 20in
Two months: 16lbs, 11oz - 23.5in
Four months: 20lbs, 4oz - 26in
Six months: 21lbs, 7oz - 28.25in
Nine months: 21lbs, 10oz - 29in

What that means is that he's only gained three ounces in three months. In the past five months, he's only gained about a pound and a half. Granted, he did gain an insane amount of weight in his first two months on Earth. He weighed so much that he was off the doctor's fancy little growth chart. Now, he's sitting around the seventy-fifth percentile for both weight and height. Which is good. Really good. I mean, he still nurses six or eight times a day and he eats a ton of solids now, so I know he's perfectly heathly and happy. If he continued to grow at the rate he was growing at, he'd weigh fifty pounds by his first birthday! But still, when the doctor told me how much he had(n't) grown, I panicked. Maybe he'd just stop growing all together. I was having visions of my little guy at eighteen years old still weighing in at twenty-one pounds.

Seriously though, he's fine. Does this look like a malnourished child to you?