Abigail: 9 Months Old – Trav and Erin + 3

Abigail turned 9 months old on May 16th while we were on our beach vacation. This has been a month of tons of development for our sweet little girl. She is really starting to interact with us more and is learning new things every week.

Abigail doesn’t have her 9 month checkup for a few more weeks, so we’ll find out her weight and height then. I’m guess she’s somewhere between 14-14.5 pounds. She is wearing mostly 3-6 month and 6 month clothes, and they are fitting pretty well. She’s still in size 2 diapers, and I’m thinking we’ll have to order more because we are almost down to the last box.

Abigail is nursing about 5 times/day right now, which translates into about every 3.5 to 4 hours. She is still going through a very distracted phase where she’ll eat for a few minutes, stop to look around, and start eating again. I don’t remember the other girls being this easily distracted, but my brain is pretty much shot these days…so who really knows :) She has also tried a few new foods this month: apple, strawberry, blueberry, oatmeal, and pear. She has tolerated all of those well and seemed to like them. She has even sucked on a dill pickle and eaten a few bites of ice cream (the perks of being the third child….your parents are much more relaxed!).

We had a scare with sweet potatoes this month on April 22nd. It was a Sunday evening, and I fed Abigail some sweet potatoes when we got home from church. (It was probably the third or fourth time she’d eaten them). She nursed about an hour later and then went to bed. We heard her about an hour later coughing and crying pretty hard. When I went in there to check on her, her crib sheet was COVERED in orange spit-up. She normally spits up a decent amount, but this was way worse than normal. She was gagging and retching about every 5 minutes, and it scared us to death. It seemed like whatever she was trying to get up was stuck, and she was having trouble catching her breath. Long story short: We ended up calling 911 and sending her in an ambulance to the ER (while I followed behind in the car, and Travis stayed home with the big girls who slept through the whole ordeal). The paramedic said she made “goo-goo eyes” at him on the way to the hospital and acted completely normal…of course! ;) She had one more episode right after we got to the ER, and that was it. After 2 IV attempts, lab work, a chest x-ray, and a lot of lost sleep, we were sent home without any real answers as to what happened. The ER doctor thought it was just a really bad spit-up episode. We have tried sweet potatoes one time since that evening, and she was fine for about 3 hours before projectile vomiting 5 or 6 times in a row (I happened to see her do it this time). Thinking back, I’m pretty sure she must have thrown up a good bit the first couple of times she ate sweet potato before the big scare, but I guess I assumed it was just typical spit-up and never thought twice about it. Brooklyn and Savannah have never had a bad reaction to any foods before, so this is all new to me. From talking to others and reading online, it sounds like babies have a chance of outgrowing this sort of reaction as they get older, so I’m hoping she’ll eventually be able to eat sweet potatoes without throwing up violently afterward. This has made me a little nervous to try other foods since that happened, but so far she has done fine with every other new food. Finger crossed for that to continue!

This has been a pretty fussy month for our sweet girl, and I think it is at least partially due to teething. She got her first tooth on May 6th (bottom right) and the one next to it looks like it will pop through any day now. Abigail has been chewing on everything she can get her hands on. She loves to gnaw on her feet and on our fingers, although we’ve had to put a stop to that now that she has a razor sharp tooth. She is reaching for and grabbing anything in sight. We’re definitely in that phase where we have to push our plates to the middle of the table or she’ll pull them right off while we’re eating dinner. Abigail also gets upset a lot these days when I walk in front of her without picking her up; she would be perfectly happy to be held all day long. And I’d be happy to do just that if there weren’t a million other things to do around the house. The nice thing about her being the third child is that I know this is just a phase :)

Abigail has gotten a lot stronger physically this month. She is now sitting up without using her arms for support and can usually sit for several minutes before falling over. She can also spin around in a circle on her belly using her arms. She is never in the same spot in her crib when she wakes up that she was when I laid her down. She turns herself by pushing with her arms. Abigail is so interested in everything around her that I bet it won’t be long before she’s scooting or crawling to get to things nearby. We’ll see!

Abigail has really gotten interested in her big sisters lately. It is getting a lot easier to make her smile and laugh, and I think that has encouraged Brooklyn and Savannah to pay her more attention. It is so fun to watch them interact! Usually Abigail doesn’t mind the noise and chaos too much; I guess she’s gotten used to it after 9 months :) She is also starting to notice Gabby and reaches for her when she gets close enough. Gabby better watch out because there will be another little girl after her before long!

On the medical front, Abigail had a great checkup with the ENT a few weeks ago. She passed the hearing test on both ears this time, and the doctor said everything looks good right now. We’ll take her back to be rechecked in 6 months, but in the meantime, we’re thankful that she is currently hearing well and having no issues! Alnd, although the visit to the ER didn’t yield much information in terms of the sweet potato scare, we did find out from the bloodwork they did that Abigail has iron deficiency anemia. So now we’re doing iron drops twice a day! Apparently, most iron drops taste terrible, but the kind they recommended to us must taste pretty good because Abigail loves it. She gets upset when I STOP giving it to her after the syringe is empty…haha. Looking back at pictures from a month ago, Abigail had gotten really pale, so it’s not shocking that she’s anemic. I think her color has already gotten better, so I’m hoping these drops are helping. We will get her blood work done again at her 9 month checkup, so we’ll see for sure then. Finally, her cradle cap is pretty well controlled these days. I think it’s improving on its own because I’m using less and less of the cream/scalp oil every week, and it’s still looking pretty good overall. Abigail is actually getting a little bit of hair too…haha! It’s not really enough to be noticeable from far away, but up close you can see it :)