(The following is a personal rant; read at your own risk.)

I forgot how much I hate well-baby checks. If I could, I’d skip ‘em or at least cut way back. Well-baby checks have their place but I’ve got 47 million books here on child development and I know what she “should” be doing at this age and she’s doing it and she’s healthy as a small pony so I don’t see much point. However, since the agency will have legal custody of Madison ’til October — per Ohio law — I have to go so there I went yesterday to answer nonsensical questions such as, “How much does she sleep at night?” Me: “I don’t know. I don’t look at the clock when she wakes up.” And then I face the pursed lips when the doc figures out that we’re co-sleeping.

We got in an argument (or shall I say, discussion colored by vehemence) about how much Madison eats. I have no idea how much she eats so when the doctor asked how many ounces, I made a wild guess and said, “I don’t know, I wash bottles, what, twice? And there are four or five bottles in a load? And we put 4 oz in a bottle so I’ll take a guess and say 36 oz but she always leaves at least an ounce in every bottle so maybe 27, I’m not sure.” I mean, really, I have no idea how much she eats; we’re feeding on demand.

So the doctor looks at chubby old Madison lolling about gleefully on the exam table and announces that we’re over-feeding her. And I, of course, start arguing and she, of course, plays her “I’m the doctor and you’re a housewife” card and starts quoting studies about “life-time obesity.” And I say I’ve read the fucking studies (only I don’t say fucking because that’s a sure way to make doctors not listen to you) because I just wrote an article about childhood obesity and then she says, condescendingly with false sympathy, that parents often think a child is hungry and stick a bottle in the kid’s mouth “and it may make then stop crying but then the parent isn’t really meeting the baby’s needs.” I was livid. And suddenly horribly guilt-stricken because she’s basically accusing me of neglecting my kid and I don’t think I am but what if I am and don’t know it?

The doctor said that Madison shouldn’t be eating more than 20 ounces a day, which is absolutely nuts (as I told her) seeing as how 20 ounces a day was what they told me she should be eating in the hospital when she was 8 lbs. One can assume that she should be eating more at two months. “Well then,” the doctor reluctantly amended, “24 ounces.” For a 15 lb baby, no less. 15 lbs 2 oz, to be exact and 23.5 inches, although her head was a bit tilted and I’m betting she’s taller. (Noah, I must add, was 11 lbs 11 oz and 23 inches at that age, which was exactly 50th percentile making him alarmingly average.)

That’s the thing about well-baby visits. I can intellectually know that the doctor is insane but still whatever they say goes into my brain and rattles around shaking up my confidence.

I remember when Noah was 9 months old and he quit gaining like he had been. He’d also started walking and babies stretch out when they move. He was totally NOT into solids because all he wanted to do was fuel up at the breast and then run around like a very small lunatic. The doctor said he was too skinny and that I better “butter his broccoli” to fatten him up. I said, “He doesn’t eat broccoli or anything else so buttering it isn’t going to help any.” Besides, I pointed out, Noah was following his very tall, nicely built father’s growth curve exactly. (Brett, being the first-born, had a meticulously kept baby book, which came in handy, let me tell you.) The doctor didn’t believe me and told me to supplement him with formula to fatten him up.

I switched doctors that time, too.

Madison is in the 90th percentile for height and a little over 100th percentile for weight. Which means that she’s tall and chubby. Babies grow up and out and the height/weight proportion aren’t wildly out of sync so I’m not concerned. Also, her birth mom was a big baby (breastfed, I found out too, so she was meant to be big) and her birth dad is currently the size of my refrigerator so it’s not beyond imagination that he was a big baby, too.

Anyway, I was pissed so I came home and spent the last 24 hours carefully logging how much Madison eats. That meant dumping out the left-overs from her handy-dandy collapsible bottles into the easier-to-read regular ones to monitor what she was getting. And the result? 24.5 ounces. But here’s the thing, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, whose review book I have right here and whose name was invoked in hushed, reverent tones by the stupid doctor, the recommendation for formula fed babies is 2.5 ounces of formula per pound of body weight, up to 32 oz a day. Meaning that the docs recommendation of 20 ounces was insane and that we are apparently underfeeding her since it’s appears to be scientifically impossible that she has the caloric support to grow. A fact I can happily deny by pointing to her copious rolls.

If Madison was a giant breastfed baby, I would have had no trouble rolling my eyes at the doctor because I know now that however breastfed babies grow — provided that they’re nursing at the breast on demand and providing the requisite number of wet diapers — it’s absolutely perfect. Skinny Noah was perfect, my friend’s 19 lb 3-month old was also perfect. It’s a bit more difficult with formula fed babies because sometimes they want to suck but not to eat. A breastfed baby can change his/her sucking to get exactly what they want — fluttersucking for comfort, shallow sucking for thirst-quenching foremilk or deep sucking for tummy-satisfying hindmilk. Formula fed babies are at the mercy of their bottles. Brett and I have had to learn how Madison signifies wanting to eat versus wanting to suck but we’ve figured it out now because we are attentive parents and don’t stick bottles in her mouth every time she squeaks, despite the doctor’s assumption otherwise. I really resented the implication that we might be pacifying her with food instead of meeting her emotional needs because we’ve worked hard NOT to do that.

Oh gosh, I have no way to wind down this rant. I’m going to go squeeze on my squishable daughter.

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