Avery's 10 Month Dr. Appointment

I know I say it every time I post about Avery's Well Visits, but seriously, how is my baby 10 months old already??!! Today was her 10 month check up and she weighed exactly 21 pounds. Her growth has obviously slowed down a lot, since she only gained 1 pound, 5 ounces over the last 2 months since her 8 month appointment. She measured 28 inches long, which means she grew 1.25 inches.

Here's my naked baby on the scale :)

When I showed these pictures to John, he said she's going to kill me one day when she's older! I couldn't help but take her picture, since all she wanted to do was stand up on the scale. Believe me, this was the most flattering picture I took :) Actually, I think all the crawling around has thinned out her thighs a little bit!

One thing they do at the 10 month appointment is prick her finger to measure her blood for anemia. I was a little worried about this test, since Reagan didn't pass it at this age. The nurse squeezes a few drops of blood onto a disc that goes into a reader ... if the number comes back lower than 11, it means she's anemic and has an iron deficiency.

The first time she did the test, it read 8.8. She said their readers had been giving lots of low readings, so she performed the test a second time. It came back at 9.2, still too low. Dr. Battista said he wasn't confident in these numbers and told me I needed to take Avery to a lab so they could do a more efficient test.

I decided to go straight to Labcorp to get it overwith. I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly when Dr. B told me to go there because I didn't realize they'd have to draw blood! I guess I assumed they'd prick her finger again and then do a more efficient type of test? I don't know. Obviously, I wasn't thinking. So when the technician told me babies made her nervous, I was a little freaked out!

The technician said that if Avery didn't have good veins, she wouldn't do it ... she said she'd only try for a vein one time, since she refused to stick a baby more than once. Luckily, she got a vein on the first try and it wasn't too bad. Avery was great and hardly even cried. I'm SURE it was more painful for me than for Avery!

The test results came back low again, 10.1 ... this means she'll have to take these horrible iron drops that taste horrible and stain everything for the next 5 or 6 months. I asked Dr. B if this condition was a result of our genes, or a result of our eating (not enough iron-rich veggies?) and he assured me it was neither. He said that babies grow so rapidly in their first 10 months that it's difficult for their blood supply to keep up. The iron reserves get depleated and need some help to get replenished. It's not a big deal, but it definitely made me sad to see my baby having blood drawn!