Well, now she is 7 months. In fact, she is 7 months old today. I just never posted about her turning 6 months and what better time to do that than when she is 7 months of course.
Autumn is little. At her 6 months check-up she weighed 12 pounds 15 ounces (4th percentile); she is 25 inches tall (24th percentile);’ and her head is 41.5 cm (23rd percentile). She has been sitting up for quite some time. I think she started sitting up at about 4 1/2 months. She is threatening to crawl but is not quite there. She can pull herself on to her tummy from sitting up and can get on her hands and knees. She is not really sure what to do at that point so she drops to her tummy and lifts her arms and legs up in the air like a Superman yoga pose and cries. We sit her back up and do this over and over again. She has had one tooth since about 4 months and I think I have said on a weekly basis that the other tooth next to it is on its way; it still isn’t here. (not a tooth expert). She pants when she wants something and has developed the most ridiculous smile. Ivy torments her but thinks she is helping (most of the time) and Owen can always make her laugh. She sweats when she sleeps (just like the other two). She hates her car seat and cries when she sees it. She has a fake cry when she wants me instead of someone else to hold her. And the weirdest thing about her is that she loves ears. She will hold our ears as we carry her around the house. If you turn your head away so she can’t see your ear, she violently turns your head the other way. She is weird.
The bad news about this baby is the struggle that I am having figuring out why she never sleeps, why she has a horrible recurring rash on her neck, why she has eczema on her feet, and why she gets a diaper rash often that burns her bum and requires burn cream on it.
I took Ivy to the dr. a few weeks ago for some leg pain and while we were there the dr. weighed Autumn. She had gained 3 ounces in 17 days to which the dr. proclaimed she needed to gain more weight and was referring me to the Children’s Hospital to make sure we weren’t missing anything. This was after a blood allergy test that showed eggs and peanuts and a skin test that showed eggs, and a slight allergy to corn and bananas. I already don’t eat eggs, peanuts or bananas. I called the Children’s Hospital and they said the dr.’s referral came through for a feeding problem and “failure to thrive”. I hate that term. They referred me to the Occupational Therapy clinic in which they told me they would have her come up and they would watch her eat (nursing) and give me their recommendations. I made the appointment and instantly didn’t want to go. I really don’t feel like spending too much time and too much money to be told that she is eating fine. She eats every 3-4-5 hours and eats until she is done. How confusing can this be?
My instincts tell me she is fine, but that she is allergic to something. The only thing left is corn, but have you ever looked into a corn allergy? Corn is in EVERYTHING. There is the obvious, corn chips, corn starch, corn syrup, but there is the not so obvious. Like chicken has corn in it from the chickens eating it, sugar has corn in it, caramel color has corn in it and they use that in Vitamin D tablets, vegetables can have corn on them cause they use corn for the wax that they coat them with. I am overwhelmed.
My plan is not to ignore the dr.’s advice, but to make an appointment for her (not on the heels of Ivy’s appointment) and talk to the dr. about what she should be gaining and discuss what referral she thinks is necessary. We have been hesitant to feed her food because we don’t really know what, if anything, she is allergic to. Allergy testing on infants is not that reliable. We just started feeding her apples, sweet potatoes and potatoes. She WILL NOT eat them in Magic Bullet form but likes them whole and wants to do it herself. She sucks on them and refuses to swallow any of the pieces she breaks off, so perhaps we do need to head to the hospital for her refusal to eat; but at least it seems to make more sense than to watch her nurse after 7 months to see if she is eating.
Angie will be thrilled when we figure this out / or she outgrows her problem (seeing that it is taking me so long) so that I can stop discussing it with her on a daily, or possibly hourly basis.
I guess the next step is to call the dr. to tell her I wasn’t a fan of the direction of the hospital appointment. I have no problem taking her in to see if we are missing something (as the dr. put it), but perhaps a different clinic with a different direction? Or maybe the only thing we are missing is that perhaps nothing is wrong and she just has sensitive skin and is small and I am insane. It is possible.
Whatever the problem, or lack of, she keeps smiling.
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