Pumpkin had his one year check-up yesterday. He "passed" with flying colors. I received a B+ since I have not fully weaned him off of the bottle yet and as of yesterday, I was still giving him formula instead of regular milk. He is on whole milk now and seems to love the flavor of it. We're down to two or three bottles a day, but this morning we cut out his morning bottle and went straight to a solid breakfast and boy, was Pumpkin ticked off about that! He was frowning and making protest sounds and pouts throughout breakfast.
The stats: 21 lbs 10 oz in weight, 29 inches long and a head size of 18 1/4 inches (there is a reason I've been referring to him as Pumpkin!) After starting out at 5 lbs 2 oz, he plumped up to a little butterball around 4 or 5 months but now he's just a lean, yet solid, kid. As usual, Pumpkin became sullen and angry as soon as we headed back to the exam room and it took two of us to contain him long enough to get his temperature (which he willingly submits to at home). Of course, I can't blame him since immediately after we were called back, he had his finger pricked for bloodwork for the first time and then got to finish with four shots. Unfortunately, our normal and favorite nurse, was not there and while the nurse we had was nice, she was EXTREMELY slow in giving the shots. She would take the cap off of one, give him the shot while slowly depressing the plunger, stick on a Band-Aid and repeat, repeat, repeat. Our favorite nurse gets all of the shots prepped and ready, then sticks them in one after another so quickly that she's finished before Pumpkin and I even have a chance to react.
I was nervous about the MMR shot as well as the rest of his vaccines, especially after the recent federal government ruling, but our pediatrician, who has four kids of his own, strongly recommended keeping on schedule. He feels that the rise in autism is due to some environmental factor and he wishes that more research was being done to test for those types of issues, instead of the vaccines.
As with every other parenting issues nowadays, it seems that we're bombarded with not only a huge amount of information, but also a great deal of conflicting information, which causes so many of us to overanalyze and worry about almost every parenting decision we make. Luckily, it seems like most kids turn out pretty well in spite of us!
