Yesterday was Analie’s 6 month checkup with her orthopod.  First of all, how is she six months old??  Second of all, HOW IS SHE SIX MONTHS OLD?!

We all overslept and Analie and I barely made it out the door on time.  Fortunately her orthopedist is just a 2 minute drive away and by the time we got checked in we were only five minutes late.  Then began the waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

At one point we saw our doc through the glass door as he was wandering around the halls between seeing patients, and he saw us and smiled.  We love our orthopedist.  He has fantastic bedside manner, always remembers us, is gentle with Analie, and has tolerated me sobbing in his office on at least one occasion, if not two.  (It’s all a little fuzzy at this point.)  We thought after we saw our doc that the wait would be almost over.  Alas, it was not.  Maybe someone came in with a super broken leg or something.  In any case, we waited, waited, waited and waited some more.

Poor Analie started out the morning happy as a clam, but after 45 minutes of this she was no longer happy with anyone.  Especially not the nurse who touched her little chubby leg as I was stripping her down for her X-ray.  The nurse was all, OHHH!  You’re so cute!  And Analie was like, DON’T TOUCH ME!  DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME!  GO AWAY BEHIND YOUR X-RAY WALL!

Finally, after one solid hour of sitting around in the doctor’s office, we finally heard a knock on the Princess exam room door (we are almost always in the Princess room), and in came our doc.  He reported that everything looked great: due to wearing Frank, the evil Pavlik harness, Analie’s hips have developed normally. He couldn’t see a difference between her sockets and those of a baby her age that had not been born with hip dysplasia.  WIN!  We get to wait 6 months in between visits now (even bigger WIN!) and hopefully she’ll be walking when we go back next time.

The doc and I chatted about how big Analie’s getting for a few minutes, and then somehow I mentioned I’m a failure as a mother because I only make Analie do tummy time every other day.  Maybe not even that much. (cough)  She haaates it, and I just can’t see any sense in forcing her to lay there and cry just so she can be on her stomach.

Our orthopod just chuckled, shook his head and said, “Most babies seem to hate tummy time.  Ours did too.  So we never made them do it.  You don’t see children in third world countries where they don’t know about ‘tummy time’ not being able to walk or develop normally.  She’ll be just fine if you don’t do it and she’ll develop normally.”

Um, MEGA HUGE WIN!  I figure an orthopedist should know about that kind of thing.

So guess what Analie?  You are off the hook for required tummy time.

Your doctor said.

It’ a whole new ballgame when the baby you conceived by giving yourself oodles of shots is the one receiving the shots at her 8 week checkup.

I cried.

She cried.

It was awful; poor little cuddlebug was so happy and smiley after her exam, giving bug-eyes to her doctor.  But Joey and I knew she was about to get a wakeup call, so I just sat there, trying not to pre-emptively cry, as the doctor left and said she’d send in the nurse to give the vaccines.  They were Analie’s first because we had stalled on the ones most babies get in the hospital, we refused two and held the other one off until she was older.

Her little face screwed all up in a silent scream when the nurse was injecting her, it was the kind of silent scream that stayed silent for so long you knew the poor little thing had to be both really shocked and really hurt.  And when it finally wasn’t silent anymore, um,  YEAH.  She screamed bloody murder.

She now has three bright blue crayon bandaids on her legs (or, if you’re Joey, you’d call them “cran” bandaids because he  doesn’t pronounce crayon with two syllables) and a sticky chin from the oral vaccine which she really didn’t care for either.

Two hours out and she’s basically just sleepy and a bit fussy.  I’ve got the infant Tylenol primed and ready to go if she is fussy for long enough that she can’t fall back to sleep.

But…here’s a picture I snapped on my cell phone yesterday.  It’s cute enough to chase all the gloomies away…or at least I think so.  I’ll show it to her later, she’s already really vain and LOVES pictures of herself.