Hefty Hefty Hefty

"Hooray! I'm 11 pounds, 14 ounces! And I'm SO excited!" "Ooooh, she put on the bib. That means it's feeding time!"

"That bottle is so close, I can practically taste it . . . "

Well, my darling, petite girl is no longer petite, but she’s more darling than ever! Born at 6 pounds, 15 ounces and in the 21st percentile, Miss Charlotte now weighs 11 pounds, 14 ounces—catapulting herself solidly into the 78th percentile for weight among girls. She also grew another 1.25 inches, putting her into the 57th percentile for length. We feed her, she grows. My little piglet is a great eater, which makes my life so much easier than if she were a fussy, picky eater or sensitive to a particular nipple type or refusing to take a bottle. In fact, my child has a ridiculously strong sucking reflex. We’ve invested in the slowest possible nipples for her bottles, but she still eats so fast (with great, enthusiastic grunts) that she coughs, spits up, and half the formula or milk drips down her chin. A dainty eater she is not. I’ve even seen (and experienced) her talent for sneezing without loosening her mouth’s grip. It’s sort of gratifying to watch her, though. She’s so happy and content when nursing or feeding and so easy to please. When she has a bottle, she doesn’t give a hoot whether it’s warm, room temperature, or ice cold. She happily takes baby Tylenol, although its sweetness appears to make her a bit suspicious—she furrows her eyebrows, but she still takes it. She tries to drink her bath water (don’t worry, I don’t actually let her drink it). She even swallowed an oral immunization dose with no fuss. Which leads me to my next topic: immunization shots. I hate them. Hate them, hate them, hate them. At Charlotte’s 2-month check-up, my girl was a happy, chubby baby, hanging out on the elephant changing table (we had the jungle-themed exam room this time), clad only in a diaper and with a goofy grin on her face. For the first time ever, she easily succumbed to all of the pediatrician’s poking and prodding. Then it was time for her three immunization shots. Still happily observing the room, she watched as the nurse entered. When her chubby thigh was wiped with alcohol, Charlotte frowned and narrowed her eyes. Something was amiss. And then bam! My baby got poked and she screamed the most desperate scream. As one friend put it, you swear they’re howling, “Mommy! Mommy! Why are you letting this happen to me?” Suffice it to say, neither Charlotte nor I had dry eyes (though I held it together much, much better than during her heel prick ordeal 6 weeks earlier). I rubbed her little head and talked to her close to her face, mainly repeating variations of “it’s okay” and “I’m not the one stabbing you, the nurse is.” Still, Charlotte handled all three shots like a little trooper. And because she was too little for a lollipop, I gave her a big fat kiss. By the time we called Daddy from the car to tell him her latest stats, my hefty, newly immunized girl was asleep, exhausted from all the drama.