How big is RJ?

Big enough that it would have been a bad idea to have him in a time before medical interventions, which we knew already.


This is the classic textbook example of stabilizing selection, on births before c-sections were widely available. You'll note that RJ represents the most extreme right-most itsy bitsy bar on the histogram, suggesting that he is indeed a baby of unusual size. Jolly was right where the "optimum birthweight" arrow is at the nadir of the infant mortality curve, but RJ is of a massive size that birth has complications leading to infant mortality rates spiking high again. I'm very pleased that I had such a complication-free birth... had worried about shoulder dystocia and baby getting stuck and the like, but turns out not to have been the case at all. RJ just had a big dent in his head from my pubic bone and a hematoma as a souvenir of his trip down the birth canal.

He's pretty huge in all dimensions:

And his head is also very large, though it's at least on the charts at the 95th percentile:

But, interestingly, he's very height-weight proportionate - his weight-for-height is on the 50th percentile. This explains why when he was born, someone in the room said, "Oh, well he's not that big after all!" and why everyone in the room was pretty stunned to find the scale measuring what it did. He doesn't particularly look like a chunky baby at all: he's very average-looking, just scaled-up in all dimensions. His placenta was also very average-sized, apparently.

Our big weight-related goal is to see whether he's recovered his birthweight at tomorrow's 2 week pediatrician check-up. He was a bit slow to start a gaining trajectory in the hospital, though the nurses and lactation consultants were very reassuring that this is normal and that it's also to be expected given the circumstances (sick baby, being taken off IV fluids)... and on the last day before discharge actually lost a bit of weight again in spite of a comforting gain trajectory over the previous few days. Again, the nurses were very reassuring since he was outputting appropriately and eating frequently and gaining appropriate amounts of weight pre-and-post-feeding to indicate that he was getting nourishment while on the boob... but still, I'm type A and especially now that I'm at home it's hard for me to be measuring the amount of eating my child is doing in time (which can be spent seriously eating or sort of dozing) rather than something sensible like g or ml. Bottle feeding was much more my speed because I always knew exactly how much Jolly had consumed! But, breastfeeding seems to be going well also and I think I'll stop freaking out so much about whether our child has slept for more than 3 hours since the last feeding if he's regained his birthweight. And hopefully good nourishment means that he's also getting the resources he needs to heal his lungs more fully.

In other news, Jolly and RJ's aunt left very hastily the day after our arrival at home since she spiked a 102 degree fever and was feeling really sick, and then Jolly also came down with a cold, probably Ephiny's since he's nowhere near as sick as his aunt was. So far, RJ and I seem to have avoided getting said cold due to quarantining ourselves in the bedroom and loads of hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray... but it's all a bit nerve wrecking, since a cold for RJ now will likely mean another stint on oxygen in the hospital and I so very much DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK right now. I'll be very happy when the other members of our household are well again and we can all hang out together as one family, and even happier when a few weeks have passed and thus the neonatologist's feeling was that RJ's lungs would have had time to heal and thus become more like a normal term infant's. I really hate being one of those moms with the germ phobia - it does not come naturally to me, but we'll do what we have to do to keep RJ home and healthy.

But, nontheless, I'm a bit terrified of leaving the house tomorrow, especially to go wait in a room at the clinic with sick people... but I will personally kick anyone who tries to touch my baby in the shins, so there's that.