A Visit with Dr. MacDowell

Today we had our first check-up with Dr. Andy MacDowell in Delaware. Emily was a real trooper!

She got weighed (14 lbs.), measured (26 inches?) and we got to tell the doctor different things that we have observed about her development. He is impressed with how healthy she is and with her muscle tone. As we figured, she does have some gross motor skill development delays and he recommended we get ahold of the "Help Me Grow" program for an evaluation and see what types of things they recommend to get her caught up.

We also asked Dr. MacDowell about her babyhouse schedule and feeding schedule. He agreed with us that they had her scheduled to sleep a lot more than normal and said that we could start simply following her cues to see when she needed to nap. He also recommended that we start feeding her at our meal times as well and start working in some vegetables and other foods so she's getting a more well rounded diet.

Here's the schedule she's been on from the babyhouse:

6am - 8 oz. bottle of formula
6-9:30am - sleep
10am - cereal and applesauce or fruit baby food
10-12 awake / playtime
12-2 nap
2pm cereal
2-4pm awake / playtime
4-6pm nap
6pm 8 oz. bottle of formula
6-8pm awake / playtime
8pm - 6am night sleep
10pm 8 oz. bottle of formula

Emily also got 3 shots before we left. She was already up way past her regular naptime but she did really well. She got 2 shots in one thigh and one shot in the other thigh. She cried during the shots and when the bandaids were put on but as soon as I picked her up she was all smiles again! What a kid!

After our check-up we went shopping to buy some more babyfood. I bought a little of everything so we can start sampling some different foods. So far, she's not too picky. The only thing she hasn't liked that I tried is some rice cereal while we were Almaty. I don't think she cared for the texture. She tried some rice cereal in a baby food jar and she ate it fine.

So far, she's had wheat cereal, mixed cereal, rice cereal, oatmeal cereal with apples/bananas, apple juice, apple/banana juice, pears, apple/banana babyfood and we tried ham & apple flavored babyfood today and it was hit. We also tried some apricots and they passed the test too! She's still a really good eater and sometimes will only fuss if I don't get it in fast enough when we start out.