Lillian’s 12 month doctor visit

The morning of the check-up:

Last Wednesday Lillian had her 12 month checkup. We were eager to hear her stats! We were also eager to hear the results of the blood test that’s standard around 12 months of age to determine lead and iron levels in her body. We weren’t concerned about the lead, but seeing as Lillian is living on mostly breast milk still we needed to see how she was doing on iron.

First of all, here are her stats:

12 months 1 week old:

21 pounds – 47th percentile

29 3/4 inches long – 68th percentile

17 1/2 inches head circumference – 30th percentile

Our girl still remains lean and long. The doctor looked at her development and said all was great. 🙂 He of course asked us if we’ve decided about any vaccines yet and we told him we are going to wait until she’s at least 2 years old if at all. With as much research as we’ve been doing on the ingredients and what they could possibly do to a body over the years we are just not comfortable with the thought of injecting her with any yet. Of course we’re so terrified of the thought of her contracting any serious disease without any benefit of protection that vaccines may provide, but we will keep her the healthiest we can, and pray she stays well! Now if the ‘health’ industry would come up with vaccines that have no harmful heavy metals, animal DNA, aborted fetuses, and lots more toxic stuff – we’d be only to happy to give Lillian those. But that will never happen. OR if they will finally do long-term studies of the effect all of these shots given at once to little babies and can prove they’re safe, then we’d be more comfortable giving them to her.

Anyway, as we were finished talking to the doctor, he wished us a happy weekend and logged off his computer and stood up to leave. I said “Isn’t she getting her iron levels checked today?” And he said “Yes that’s right” and proceeded to sit down and log back in like he was going to all along. Sheesh.

We went down to the lab and waited our turn. When it was Lillian’s turn (the baby boy ahead of her screamed his poor little head off the entire time) we had her sit on my lap and Josh got ready with her baby song/learning app on my iphone. She fussed a little (the tech took soooo long to get enough blood out of Lillian’s poor precious finger) but never screamed or cried!! That’s our good brave girl!

We finally got the results on Friday, and it turns out she’s borderline anemic. 🙁 Her results were:  Hgb 10.6 g/dl (normal levels are 10.5-15) and Hct 30.9 % (normal levels are 30.0-42.0).

The doctor called to say that we should put her on a baby liquid multi vitamin called poly-vi -sol twice a day for 2 months and her levels will be checked again at her 15 month checkup. Apparently it’s really common for babies this age to be low on iron, but we wish Lillian’s levels were higher! Iron in breast milk is a bit lower than in baby formula, but the iron in breast milk is more efficiently absorbed than from formula. We’ve been giving her Earth’s Best baby oatmeal and rice cereal that are fortified with iron, so we’ll continue to do that in the mornings, and we’re going to have her eat more meats and beans during the day in addition to nursing but she doesn’t eat as much food as she does nurse, so we’re thinking we’ll have to do the vitamin. We don’t like some of the additives in poly-vi-sol though, so we’re currently researching some alternatives.

We’re so happy to have another check-up done and so blessed and happy to have a healthy perfect girl! Now we just have to make sure her iron levels get a little higher!