Caleb’s 10 Week Stats
Today Caleb had his 10 week check-up at Kaiser. I spent almost three hours at the doctor’s office, most of it in the waiting room of the pediatrics vaccination clinic, but I’ll get to that later.
Here are his current stats:
Weight: 12 lbs., 9 oz. (61.68% of weight percentile for age)
Length: 23″ (42.42% of length percentile for age)
Head Circumference: 15.25″ (16.03% of head circ. for age)
Josh is concerned that Caleb’s head circumference is a bit small for his age, especially considering that he’s a Lewis. To combat this, Josh has started a three-times-a-day regimen of telling Caleb how beautiful and smart he is. At this rate, we figure Caleb’s head will get big in no time.
Caleb also received three shots (DTAP/HBV/IPV, Pneumonia, and HIB/PRP-T) and one oral vaccine (Rotavirus). He cried, I cried. He has little band-aids on his chubby thighs. I hate seeing babies get shots. (P.S. What kind of person wants the job of stabbing babies with needles? I mean, someone’s gotta do it, but seriously, that job would stink. Although, I suppose I’d rather have that job than the circumcision job, but I digress…)
On with the torture of today. I checked in for our doctor’s appointment (with Dr. Griffin), waited about 5 minutes, went in, and had a great check up. Caleb was in an awesome mood and smiled and cooed the entire time. The doctor kept commenting on what a happy guy he was, and that just made me feel fantastic. Of course, I know that had she seen Caleb at certain other times of the day, he wouldn’t have been as grinny, but I’ll take what I can get!
After a nice visit with the doctor, we went over to the pediatrics vaccination clinic to get his shots. We waited for TWO HOURS. Those of you who have had small children know that sitting in a waiting room with lots of bored toddlers and their parents is not a fun thing to do. To make matters worse, the rooms where kids were given vaccinations were on each side of the waiting room. Unfortunately, the genius who designed the place didn’t think to make those rooms soundproof. Through the closed doors we heard the frantic screams, wails, and “Mommy! Mom-mom-MOMMY!” of poor children who had just been poked. Seriously, some kids sounded like there was an exorcism going on. “MA!! MA!!! MA!!! AHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHHHH! NO! NO! NO! MAAAA!!!!” The toddlers in the waiting room would go to their parents, looking concerned for the sweet little girl that was just carried out of the room, tears and snot streaming down her face. The parents would tell their toddlers, “It’s okay, Sweetie, you’ll be fine.” Yeah, right. They knew they were being lied to. They knew it was only a matter of time before they had to face whatever was on the other side of the door. And some of them tried to make a break for it, only to be dragged back to the waiting room kicking and crying. They knew that something awful was behind those doors, perhaps something related to whatever made those sounds in their closets or under their beds at night.
I listened to those wails for TWO HOURS. It really starts to get to you. I tried reading a book, but would get to the end of the page and have no idea what I just read. I tried reading the same page about four times, but none of what I had read would stick to my brain. So, I spent a lot of the time staring at the ceiling or watching the parent-child dynamics in the waiting room. (Caleb pretty much just nursed and slept the whole time there, so he was pretty easy. I ended up having to dance around with him a bit at the end just to keep him occupied, but that was fine).
The neat thing about watching parent-child dynamics is that you get to see all different kinds of parenting styles. There was (1) the parent who loudly announced everything her child did, “OH! LOOK AT HER SMILE! YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL, HONEY! YES YOU ARE!! YES YOU ARE!!!” There was (2) the parent who hated her life (at least today) because her kid was going, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” while she ignored him and played on her cell phone. Then, you had (3) the overstimulating parent who insisted on airplaning her 9-week-old through the place, “Rarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! Zooooooooom!!!” I also enjoyed watching (4) the father of the only teenager there. His 16-year-old sat next to him listening to his iPod, seeming really annoyed that he had to sit in the same room as airplane lady and loud-talking lady. And of course there was (5) the mother of a four-year-old boy who kept trying to teach him colors. “This is red. RED.” Her son was so hyped up he kept trying to run down the halls or steal toys from other kids. I wondered what the point was of trying to show colors to spazz-out-boy, but who knows. There were many other parent-child sets there, several of whom were very good with their kids. It’s interesting to people watch and see all the differences out there.
So, yeah, two hours later, my beautiful son got stabbed three times and we got to go home. I was exhausted by that point, amazed at how much energy I had drained from three hours out of the house. Luckily, Caleb was also sleepy, so I was able to come home and enjoy some quality chill time in the rocking chair with him. He’s such a trooper.