New Pediatrician

Yesterday I took Riley for his 9-month well visit with his new pediatrician, Dr. N, who is actually the cousin of a good friend of mine. Nola was with me to help wrangle my increasingly squirmy child, which I much appreciated while filling out all of the new patient paperwork.

(Sidenote: you should see him during diaper changes or getting his pj’s on at night lately….ridiculous!)

I really liked Dr. N. She was with us for a good amount of time, explained everything in detail, and answered all of my questions. I will definitely miss Dr. B and the rest of his staff, but I’m glad we found a good replacement doc for Riley-bean.

Here are his official stats per yesterday’s visit:

• Weight: 22 lbs, 9 oz
• Height: 29 inches
• Head circumference: 17.7 inches

He is apparently in the 80th percentile for weight and the 75th for height, pretty well above average.

Dr. N gave Riley a clean bill of health and said he is growing very well. We are still to continue with the sippy cup training, filling it with a juice and water mixture if necessary to further entice him.

Riley is also no longer on many diet restrictions, although I plan to finish out all of the rice cereal and baby food I have stockpiled. Dr. N said now is the time to start introducing him to table food, starting out with things that are easily mashable. But she said we can absolutely give him almost everything we eat ourselves, just as long as we mash it up really well.

(However, the mashing may not be completely necessary for too much longer: Dr. N thinks that the bottom tooth we found over the weekend is actually two coming in together, and she said that his top two front teeth aren’t very far away from making an appearance!) 

We are also supposed to start helping him to develop his pincer grasp by giving him snacks of finger foods. I had already been doing that sporadically with some Gerber Puffs (thanks, Karen!), but now I’ll have to build in a couple of snack times each day. Dr. N also said to give him some yogurt every day.

The only things he is still restricted on until he turns one are shellfish, peanut butter, citrus, egg whites, and also anything too spicy or salty.

I fully admit that this new way of doing meals is going to be a challenge for me. It’s so easy right now to grab a Gerber food out of the pantry, pop it open, and sit down to feed him. Now I’m actually going to have to THINK a bit more.

Perish the thought.

I leave you with the following bonus video. As you may remember from one of the pictures in a recent post, Riley tenses up every now and then for who-knows-what reason. And apparently while Kenny and I were finishing up our move, Nopsi dubbed this behavior Riley’s “Hulk” move.

Nola was doing the same thing to him while we were waiting for Dr. N to come in, and he was doing it right back to her. I didn’t get the best part on video, but please enjoy all the same!