7 months!

Wow. I can't believe it. Cooper is 7 months old. It's amazing how time is flying by even though it often feels like it's crawling by thanks to ongoing sleep deprivation.

Cooper had a doc appointment today to get his flu shot booster and his prevnar vaccine. Usually that would be just a nurse's appointment but when we arrived and checked in I told them I'd like them to have a doctor come look at his ears and listen to his lungs. The nanny was sick last week and had an ear/throat thing so I want to be sure we don't have anything like that going on without being aware of it and Cooper has an occasional cough which I wasn't worried about but because a cough is how we discovered his aspiration pneumonia and he's still refluxing and now is eating solid foods I want to be sure we're not overlooking anything.

His ears looked "perfect" and lungs sound "perfect" too, according to Dr.Brian. Yay!

While Dr.Brian was there I filled him in on Cooper's sudden doubling of formula intake that started about 3 weeks ago. He's drinking anywhere from 15-24 oz of formula between 10pm-6am daily and I wanted to be sure that was OK since that brings his daily total to over 40 oz per day. Dr.Brian said it's common for growth spurts for the increased intake and sleeping (the sleeping part made me laugh) - and he said there's no reason to worry about the total number of oz he's drinking per day. Excellent. I told him Cooper hates the solid food eating experiment I put him through twice daily. He said it's pretty common for babies to object to it for the first couple months but to be persistent to give him the practice of using the spoon and moving the food from front to back since it's so different from what they do when drinking from the bottle. He said its OK if he doesn't eat much of it either since his main source of nutrients should be formula anyway. Excellent.

Cooper weighed in at 18 lbs and measured 26 in long. I was right about the growth spurt going on - he's gained 1 lb, 13 oz (that's almost 2 lbs) plus an inch in length - in a month!

Cooper was not too pleased about the shots (one each leg) but he's comfortably sleeping now and I'm hoping he continues to sleep tonight. The Tylenol he gets for 24 hours when he gets shots usually helps him sleep better but tonight he's woken screaming a couple of times already. He was so upset that I had to wake him up completely to get him to calm down. Then once he was calm I had to coax him back to sleep. I think the poor kid had a nightmare because he wasn't hungry and didn't seem to have gas issues either.

In other news...Cooper's nanny is expecting a baby! She and her husband are expecting the baby to join their family in late August/early September. Very exciting. I know what you're thinking though....ut oh now what? Right? It's OK. Our plan all along was for Cooper to return to daycare when he is between 12-15 months old. He'll be a year old in June and 14 months old in August. By then the reflux will be less problematic and hopefully his immune system will be stronger so he can tolerate the usual colds and bugs that breed in that environment better than he did before. IF it turns out to not be the case then we'll have to go back to the nanny option but we'd probably have to find a new nanny because I would want the nanny focused on my child and not splitting her time between mine and her own. We'll figure that out this summer though.