Four month check-up

I took Lia for her four month check-up on Saturday. She's not officially four months old until Sunday, but seeing as we'll be leaving for Taiwan then, I didn't want to risk her having a reaction to her shots. Of course, I didn't have to worry about that at all. Dr. Grace wasn't there on Saturday and Dr. W was "pinch-hitting" for her. He actually heads up the practice and we haven't seen him since Ian was born. He's a very nice man and right away assured me that the appearance of Lia's eyes floating towards her nose was merely an optical illusion. He used a term that I had to look up later - pseudostrabismus. Babies, especially Asian babies (and Asians generally), tend to look slightly cross-eyed because there is more skin around the nose and have wider bridges, so there is less of the whites of the eyes visible. I always thought it was because I was so near-sighted. Dr. W told me not to worry. I told him I wasn't worried. Ian looked that way when he was a baby, too.

Lia measured 25 inches and weighed 15 lbs, 7 oz. Chunky monkey! He did not give me percentiles because he thinks that those growth charts are out-dated and inaccurate. So he said that he would tell me how to calculate how tall Lia would be: take the average of the parents' heights and add or subtract one.

Dr. W: "How tall are you?"
Me: "About 5'2"."
Dr. W: "How tall are you really?"
Me: "I really am 5'2"... ish."
Dr. W: "OK, just checking. How tall is your husband?"
Me: "6'1"."
Dr. W: "Well, thank goodness for that."

That means Lia will be around 5 feet 6 inches! Whoa! For boys, it's the average of the parents' heights plus 5. So he'll be around 6 feet or so.

Lia was so good and quiet. She just lay there while he poked and prodded at her. He listened to her heart and he heard the murmur, too. He told me that if she had been a screamer, it probably wouldn't have been detected until she was much older and then we would have had to take her to the cardiologist anyway to confirm it was an innocent murmur. He commented that she was a very good baby and that it was a good start to his day to have such a nice, quiet, cooperative baby.

Lia got one shot. Dr. W told me about how there's a shortage of vaccines now and that they don't always have what they need in stock. Lia only got one shot because she wasn't ready for some of the other shots yet and another one that she could get is now sold in combination with something else, so better to wait. I can't remember now what shot she just got, but Dr. W said that he's very good at giving shots. He didn't even have me hold her. He jabbed her in the thigh really quickly and a half second later, her lower lip started to quiver and she whimpered, but she didn't cry. She started to bleed a bit and he said, "Darn! Usually I'm so good that they don't even bleed!" She got her band-aid and she was fine. Yay!