We thought she was, but now we know. We went to the doctor today and she's gained as much weight as her doctor wanted her to at this point. She's still only in the 5th percentile, but at least she's on the chart now. Thank you all for your concern. We really appreciate it.
Today we had a nurse visit our home as part of a program that we qualify for, mostly to check up and give us information about how to take care of Lydia. As part of the visit, we asked her if she could weigh Lydia, because we've been pretty worried about her weight gain lately. She just seems so skinny, especially compared to other babies her age. The news was worse than I thought. Lydia weighed in at 7lb 15oz. Given the fact that she weighed 7lbs 13ozs when she was born, this is really bad. It puts her below the lowest line on the percentile chart. (Which is the 3rd percentile, by the way. Can you be in the 0th percentile?)
So, needless to say, we're pretty worried about her. It's interesting because I did the same thing when I was a baby, but it looks like it's for different reasons. My mom accidentally starved me (I only gained 1oz in 2 months), but I'm pretty confident that I've been feeding her plenty. We called the doctor and he's going to help us figure out what's wrong at the beginning of next week.
Luckily, every other aspect of Lydia seems to be developing just fine. She's very active and is hitting all of her developmental milestones. We just want her to be healthy, and hopefully, we can fix whatever is wrong and help her get to where she needs to be.
For those of you that we haven't complained to in the last month, here's the deal: Lyddie has been crying pretty much non-stop from when she was three weeks old to when she was six weeks old (last week). This has been rather grating, as you can imagine. I was getting frustrated, Meagan was getting pretty sad, and our home was just sort of a stressed-out place to be.
We finally got the idea that babies aren't supposed to cry for twelve hours a day, so we called up Lydia's doctor. He said that it sounded like acid reflux, which is apparently rather common in infants. In fact, Wikipedia says that some estimate as many as 35% of infants have issues with acid reflux. The doctor prescribed medicine for Lyddie, and told us to let him know how it went.
I was skeptical at first. I mean, heck, he did this over the phone. I would much rather have had him see her and actually bother. I was sort of cursing under my breath about doping up my baby without having a clue. But I was just wanting so much for her to be a happy baby that I was willing to do whatever.
We started giving her half of a pill every afternoon (for what it's worth, the pill isn't narcotic or anything. It's called lansoprazole, and it's proton pump that basically just keeps her stomach from producing acid, thus eliminating the pain of the reflux. Oh, and she should grow out of this before her first birthday, by the way.). And in the last four days since she's started it...wow. The change has been night and day. Meagan and I are just so happy to have her here now. We loved her before, of course, but now she's actually a joy to have around. She sleeps throughout the day, only cries for a few hours each day, is consolable when she is crying, and has started smiling and interacting with us more. It's like she's a different baby. And now we're having the pleasure of seeing little peeks of personality come through, instead of just non-stop crying. Heck, she might even start putting on weight now, since she's not spending the whole day yelling and flailing her arms and legs.
All in all, we're grateful to have our little girl back. It must have been a tough few weeks for her too, but now I think we're all happy to be here.
It's a good life.
I've put most of these on facebook, but for those who read this blog who aren't on facebook, here are a few of my favorite pictures of Lydia.
She's recently been trying to smile, but usually it's not quite right. I like this one for that reason.
Scrunchy-faced Lyddie. We hope she grows out of it, but for now it's pretty cute.
This is Lydia with an attitude. She's just ticked off in this one.
Lately, at a six and a half weeks old, Lydia has taken to her tummy. She actually really likes it. It's like her magic off-button. Whenever she cries, I can set her on her tummy and she'll usually stop crying within five minutes. However, those first five minutes can really make her angry and she will usually scoot around like crazy. She's always been a strong baby, but I think she's just getting stronger. In this video, which is about a minute and a half long, she turns nearly 180 degrees and goes from the middle of the blanket to almost completely off of it.
So, I expected it would happen, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. It was inevitable that Lydia would love Rock and Roll. Her father is basically breeding her to do so. For example, he has sung her unorthodox lullabies since she was born. The other day I heard him singing Bohemian Rhapsody to her (I admit I joined in by the end). He's also sung her Led Zeppelin, Simon and Garfunkel, and other of his favorites.
We noticed pretty early on that she enjoyed guitar solos. When she was about 4 weeks old, Tyler was listening to Freebird in the car, and she Lydia was crying. That is, right up until the guitar solo, and she immediately quieted down. This could have been just a coincidence, but there is more evidence.
Some of our friends gave us baby Beatles CDs. They are basically quiet renditions of Beatles songs for babies to listen to while they fall asleep. She doesn't really like them much. However, the other day, Tyler got a bunch of records, including a Zeppelin IV LP. I was holding her as he was playing with his new record player and she was screaming. As soon as he started the album, though, she immediately quieted down. I thought it could be a coincidence, but as soon as he stopped the record, she started screaming again. Like that very second. I asked Tyler to start it up again to see what would happen, and she stopped crying as soon as it began to play. Lyddie likes hard rock.
This makes her father very happy.
In fact, she was just crying a minute ago and I wanted to write on the blog, so I turned on Zeppelin IV and she stopped. It's like magic.
So there you have it. My 6 and a half week old baby is a rocker.
It's now 5:53 AM.
First off, I don't know if it really is a word or not, but "bloggings" as a noun is now my new favorite word.
Here is a video of Lydia we took about two days ago. She doesn't much care for swaddling, as you can see.
This may be have been taken the same day as the first, but here is Lydia enjoying her daily tummy time. We try not to do tummy time unless she's already crying for no reason, because she doesn't react very well to it.
So there you have it, Grandmas! We'll try to take video of her doing things where she's happy, although, she doesn't smile yet, so it's difficult to tell when she's happy. Mostly she just looks stoned. Once she smiles, which should be any day now, we'll try to get a video of it for all of her adoring fans.
Never mind. I actually just found this one. It's kind of boring, but I'm going to put it up here anyways. Here's Lydia just being happy!
