2 Weeks and Going Strong

Well Claire is officially 2 weeks old today. We went in for her 2 week checkup and the pediatrician informed us we are doing an excellent job as parents. You might ask how our pediatrician would know that we are good parents based on just giving Claire a checkup. The metric she uses isn't the number of (or lack of) bruises on the babies body, but her weight gain. If the baby is gaining weight the doctor gives a big gold star to the parents. In fact, our baby has gained so much weight that we got a gold star and a couple of lollipops. Apparently feeding the baby is a sign of good parents. This one fact alone might help explain why 2/3 of the American population is overweight. If new parents continue to hear things like "You are the perfect parents because your daughter is gaining weight. Keep feeding her and keep it up" then of course we're going to end up with 200 lb six year olds having heart attacks. Anyway, I digress. At this checkup, Claire weighed in at a whopping 8lb. 13oz. I think a graphic is best used in this situation:

Aside from telling us about how great we are, the doctor also talked about how great Claire is. She used words like "perfect" and "beautiful" on many occasions. I'm not sure if she just says this to all parents so they feel better about themselves and their baby or if we really do have the perfect baby. Speaking of perfection, one way we keep our baby perfect is by putting gloves on her hands. We do this to prevent her from scratching herself. Any parent would know this is standard practice, but to those of you non-parents there are many surprising normal things that babies do and while at the doctors office we received a list of these. Here are just a few highlights:

Quivering of the Jaws and Legs --- This took us a while to get used to. At first glance you'd think the baby was really cold, but when she is still doing this wearing a winter jacket sitting directly underneath a heat lamp and sweating, you quickly realize this is not a sign of her being cold. (Update: Sarah informs me that babies don't sweat)

Whitish coating on the tongue --- This is just because the milk gets stuck on the babies tongue but is sometimes a sign of a more serious problem known as thrush. In our case, our baby just has a milk tongue.

Hiccups all the time --- Claire gets hiccups at least a couple of times a day. Hiccups are a sign of a good feeding. It looks like it would be very painful, as her whole body shakes. But the doctor says it doesn't hurt our perfect child.

The other big news is that Claire received her first official piece of mail. She now has a walled sized health insurance card stating that Great West will cover her health expenses assuming she can come up with the copay amount. The only problem with this is that she doesn't yet have a wallet. It seems a little early to get her one though so we might wait a few weeks.