Dear E,
This last month was an interesting one. We finally got serious about feeding you solids a couple times a day, which you took to really well. You’ve eaten pretty much every type of baby food I’ve given you without complaint: peas, green beans, squash, apples, pears, blueberries, mangoes, veggie medley and so on. The only baby food you haven’t liked, or at least tolerated, so far is oatmeal. You’ve started to want to control the spoon instead of letting me do it (which I’m sorry to say usually doesn’t work so well). But you’re good at (and love) cramming Cheerios in your mouth and gumming them to bits.
Continuing on with this month’s theme, you also cut your first tooth. It was a good two weeks of you being uncomfortable and fussy before it (your bottom right incisor) popped through. It was a little hard on you. Out of nowhere you would suddenly burst into tears for reasons known only to yourself. It was a relief when your tooth finally cut through, but somewhat anticlimatic.
It was anticlimatic because it was when you were in the hospital that we noticed your tooth had finally popped through. Yes, that’s right: “when you were in the hospital!”
Even though you love all sorts of food, apparently not all food love you back. I gave you a bottle of baby formula for the first time and you had an anaphylactic allergic reaction to it. I’ll spare you all the dreary details, but you ended up being in the hospital overnight for observation.
It was hard to see you hooked up to so many monitors and the IV. After you finally fell asleep in the shiny metal hospital crib they had for you, I lay there in the dark and listened to the chatter of the nurses in the hall and watched the lighted squiggles on the moniters move in their reassuring patterns. It was hard, but when you woke up in the morning and I leaned in over your crib you smiled and laughed out loud. E, sometimes you are breathtakingly unflappable.
I guess we have to wait until we see the allergist to find out exactly what you’re allergic to. I’m hoping for your sake that it’s not cow’s milk (because ice cream is really, really great), but if it is your dad and I will help you through it.
We’ll help you through anything.
Love,
Mama