4-month checkup

Today Sonia had her 4-month checkup with the pediatrician (or, technically, 4 months and 1 week since we were a bit tardy in making the appointment). The doctor said everything seemed great and that she is getting bigger right on schedule. She weighed in at 14 lbs 1.25 oz (55th percentile), which is in line with her height (44%) and her head circumference (64%). Apparently her body is finally catching up with her head (which has been 60-something percent all along, while her weight started out at 15%). All good news. One oddity is that she has "asymmetrical folds" on her legs (read: right leg has slightly bigger fat rolls than the left leg), which apparently can be a sign of hip dysplasia, so Sonia got her first x-ray to check for that. Everything looked normal on the x-ray, so I guess the right leg must just get kicked less than the left leg or something.

The bad news was that the pediatrician said that she will likely continue to spit-up for the foreseeable future. I believe her exact quote was, "There's nothing you can do, she just has to grow out of it." Apparently it will somewhat improve by 6 months (as her esophagus matures), but her increased mobility at that age is likely to make it worse, so net no change. Since she is putting on weight well it's not an issue of her health, more just a major annoyance for us and a big win for the manufacturers of laundry detergent. Sonia did helpfully demonstrate what we meant by spitting up all over Sameer's shirt (in her defense, she did receive 4 vaccinations), so at least they knew we weren't just imagining things.

Last piece of bad news is that apparently sunscreen is not recommended for children less than 6 months of age, so the doctor advised that we just "keep her out of the sun" when we go to Hawaii. Has this woman ever been to Hawaii?? Clearly I should just never have asked about it. I think we will go with the theory that 5.5 months is close enough to 6 months, or more accurately, I would rather risk the ill effects of using sunscreen 2 weeks too early than deal with Miss Sonia and a sunburn. :-)