Vivi at 9 Months

With the start of school, I forgot to take a 9 month picture of Vivienne but these were only a couple of days early so I’m going to call them good. She had a check up today and was 17lbs and solidly 30th percentile for both length and weight, so her tiny days are far behind her. Not that we were worried, this little girl will eat pretty much everything we give her and is a pro when it comes to feeding herself finger foods. I’m always a little frustrated by our pediatricians. The girls love them and they’re conveniently located (in contrast to the family doctor Chris and I see in another town), so we continue to go, but I feel like they’re always looking for something wrong. It’s hard to explain, because even though they support alternative vaccine schedules and are generally supportive of breastfeeding/more holistic approaches than other pediatricians around here, there’s still an undertone to visits that was never there when we took the older girls to routine checkups with family practice doctors. Like today there was this whole discussion about if we were holding Vivi too much because she isn’t pulling up to stand yet and I couldn’t answer the question about whether or not she’s able to roll from her back to her front without her arms getting in her way. ( ‍♀️ She sits or lays on her stomach when she’s playing and sleeps in our bed so there’s not much rolling around.) I get that the point of these visits is to make sure they’re meeting their milestones, but it feels crazy to me that the instructions we left the office with were “hold your baby less.” Especially considering all the other things she can do, including signing words, literally can say the word “hi,” and has mastered a bunch of fine motor skills. None of our girls have been early on the gross motor development so I’m not worried. She’ll stand and walk when she’s ready. By now I know just how quickly they grow, so I want to get in all the snuggles while I can…I just wish the doctors would be less focused on checking off all the boxes. (And don’t get me started on the night nursing conversation we had.)