The Avery Update
February 13th, 2007
Last Thursday Avery had his 2 month well-baby visit and got his first round of shots. Needless to say, it was not a good day for him. He was supposed to have the visit this week, but they moved it up since he needed to have his Synagis shot sooner rather than later. He was very unhappy when we got to the doctor since he was hungry, so I fed him while we waited for the doctor. He weighed in a 6lbs 5 oz and measured 18.5 inches. He’s still slowly moving up in the percentiles on the premature baby growth scale. Then came the not-so-fun for baby part. He got an oral vaccine first which he didn’t think was so bad. Next he got 2 shots in each leg. The 2 nurses did them at the same time to minimize the amount of times he would have to go through it. He also had to repeat the newborn genetic screen because he was premature which meant he had to have another heel stick. Overall, he was not having fun. We had to stick around for a while to make sure he didn’t have any reactions to the vaccines and Synagis, and I held him and he fell right asleep. I think he was exhausted after all that crying. We gave him a little infant tylenol before the shots and another dose 4 hrs later, but he didn’t run a fever and he didn’t seem too uncomfortable when we got home.
In other news, we confirmed at a previous weight check that his “outtie” belly button is actually an umbilical hernia. They’re not that uncommon, but they’re more common in preemies. Basically, the abdominal wall doesn’t close entirely at the umbilicus, and a little hole remains which allows things to poke through. His is completely reducible which means when you push it, everything goes back through the hole. It might resolve on its own, or when he’s older we can have surgery to repair it. Hopefully, it heals on its own.
Also, I’m still using the nursing supplementer and breastfeeding. Apparently it’s been going well since hes gaining weight consistently every week. I’m still enriching the breastmilk in the supplementer to 22cal/oz. Milk supply has been OK… Today was the first day in 5 days that I had to give him some formula because I didn’t have enough pumped milk for the supplementer, so things have been better than they were. I’ve got a few last-ditch efforts to increase milk supply that I’m trying so we’ll see how that goes. I’m hoping to try and wean him off the supplementer soon, but that really depends on having enough milk. So we will see. Time is running out, because pumping alone is known to decrease milk supply and bottles could be the end of breastfeeding. Cross your fingers!
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