I took Nathaniel for his six-week checkup this morning, at which the doctor confirmed what I’d been suspecting all along: I’ve got a stellar kid on my hands. Our doctor is generally a fairly enthusiastic person, but she was really quite pleased at his development thus far. He’s gaining nicely in weight, size, motor skills, attention, etc. Not to mention that he sat happily in my lap without crying for the entire half-hour meeting. When I came home and looked at Katherine, I realized that she, too, was a good baby; I was just too new a mother to realize it at the time. But it’s somewhat humbling to have a doctor who has seen a lot of babies confirm that Nathaniel’s doing really well.
I’m probably particularly keen on him at the moment since he let me sleep four hours before first waking last night. I won’t get too attached to that sleep, since I’m sure we’ll be up and down again, but it’s a nice bonus. So I should be very, very grateful to have landed such happy little ones. And I should enjoy it even more since I know that all of that can change once the teething starts!
One thing I find rather odd about the British physicians: they don’t seem nearly as keen on weighing and measuring as their counterparts in the States. We have no idea of Nathaniel’s length, since they apparently don’t measure that anymore, and the doctor seemed quite fine taking my bathroom-scale account of his recent weight. Although part of me would like to know a bit more, since it’s fun cheering on the growth, another part of me remembers how inaccurate the measurements for Katherine could be; at one appointment she seemed to have shrunk an inch or two from her birth length! So I appreciate the Brits’ tacit acknowledgement of the impossibility of baby-measuring accuracy.
Erin
Alan Schmierer