1/2 year old!!!

Mr. Max is now 6 months old!

We took Max for his 6 month well-baby appointment this morning and he did great! Here are the latest stats:

Weight: 16 lbs, 3 oz (30th percentile)
* up from 14 lbs, 15 oz, which was in the 50th percentile both at 4 and 2 months.

Length: 25 1/2" (20th percentile)
* up from 25", which was in the 50th percentile both at 4 and 2 months.

Head Circumference: 43 cm (30th percentile)
* up from 40 cm, which was in the 10th percentile at 4 months and 25th percentile at 2 months.

Dr. Woods said that with him becoming more active, he is probably getting closer to his own normal growth curve. She said that everything looks good as far as growth and his overall health.

We talked to her for a while about his solid food intake and sleep patterns. I told her about how he has been having what seems to be more painful gas with the rice cereal, and she agreed that we should switch to oatmeal. She said that although they usually recommend going with vegetables (starting with yellow/orange and then going to green) before fruits, we might want to introduce peaches and pears to help with any constipation he might be having with cereal.

The sleep part is going to be harder for me. She talked about how at his age he should be sleeping through the night, or at least should be able to do so. She talked about how we can help him "learn to sooth himself" by letting him cry but checking on him after 5 minutes and then every 10 minutes until he falls asleep. Right now I nurse him to sleep and he mostly sleeps with us, so this will be a HUGE change - and not just for him. I'm going to try to focus on how this is a good and important skill for him to learn. Alex is looking forward to being able to put him to bed and him falling to sleep on his own. But, we won't start until at least tomorrow night, since he had the trauma of vaccines today...

He received 5 shots (DTaP, Prevnar, HIB, IPV and influenza) and the rotavirus vaccine (taken orally).
She said they don't like to give more than 5 shots at a time, so I'll take him back for a nurse visit in a month so he can get his second HepB and second influenza shots. I did confirm that the HIB vaccine they give is NOT the kind that was recently recalled, so there's no concern there. He fell asleep nursing after the shots and is still sleeping peacefully an hour later.

His next check up will be at 9 months!