"Wow--She's Tall!"

Okay, so I addressed the biggest part of Ella's two month appointment yesterday--the shots.  But aside from the pain of the immunizations, everything else went well.  When our pediatrician pulled up her growth chart, she laughed and proclaimed "Wow--she's tall!".  Sure enough, Ella is right up there with the tallest/longest babies (sorry, I don't know the exact percentile).  I wish I had a copy of the growth chart to show (perhaps I'll ask for a printout next time), but you can see the "average" curve, and all the other "normal range" curves, and there are Ella's three little measurements from birth, one month, and two months--along the curve for the longest babies.  She is now 24-1/2 inches--or already about a third the length of my husband!  Her weight is pretty much average, and her head circumference is just a little bit on the smaller side--not that it necessarily made child birth any less painful.  I have a long and lean baby.

I talked in more detail with the pediatrician about the tiny occasional bits of blood in her stools, and my perplexity about milk allergies or a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance.  I cut out the main areas of dairy, but I haven't gone to extremes in checking every label for milk proteins--which are in so many items.  Even without dairy in my diet for the last week, we had another little episode with the blood yesterday morning.  So I brought that diaper in, and she confirmed that it was indeed a tiny tiny amount.  She checked with the attending pediatrician (who I also really like--though he's not quite as fabulous as the pediatrician who is retiring any day now), and he said that it seems like the amount and the frequency are so minimal that it's okay to just keep an eye on it but not to worry too much.  He said it's probably even okay to feed her the milk I had pumped before eliminating dairy--slowly but surely--and just to monitor her diapers to see if things get any worse.  This feels really reasonable to me, but I think I'll continue to cut out dairy where I can, just to be safe.

Today's blessing was a good heart-to-heart conversation with my husband about breast-pumps.  As if it's not going to be hard enough to go back to work and leave Ella at day care, the thought of pumping 3-4 more times per day makes me miserable.  And then to have to lug the pump around with me (not to mention the various pieces and the milk itself)...that was just too much for me to consider.  I am 100% committed to breast feeding Ella, and I would tolerate bringing the pump to and from work, but I am so grateful that he agreed to let me buy a second pump so that I can have one at home and one at work.  I know that there are plenty of women who get by with just one (and my mom had to rely on a hand pump!), but it will be such a blessing to have two (and it's also a blessing that one was given to us and I only had to buy new parts for it).