Rascal

I haven't mentioned grandbaby #3, second grandson, aka Rascal on here much since his birth last year in May.  He recently turned a year old, and I broke Stay Home orders to deliver his birthday presents from DH and I.  Although I didn't hold him, and I stayed mostly six feet away, I did see him in person (briefly) on his birthday.

Back when he was born, induced a week before his due date because that's the way all of K2's babies have been born, he was small.  Just 5 pounds 8 ounces.  That worried me.  But, apparently all his test scores were good enough that he went home within 48 hours of being born.  His small birth weight was explained away as a result of the medications K2 had been on to help stabilize her mental health.

When I saw him for the first time, he just looked so tiny and fragile.  My smallest baby was DD1, who was born at 37 weeks gestation and weighed in at 6 pounds 3 ounces.  Here was a baby a full two weeks 'older', but weighing more than half a pound less.

His first month at home, he just looked smaller and smaller to me.  Skeletal.  But he wasn't due for a check up for another month yet, so his parents hadn't taken him to the doctor.  Until he choked while nursing and stopped breathing.  DS1 was able to resuscitate him while waiting for the paramedics they'd called.  Rascal was taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed with aspiration (the choke) and also failure to thrive.

It was a scary time.  But, it also ended up being the best thing that could have happened to that little boy.  Because with three days in the hospital, and weekly monitoring--that included weighing him as well as measuring his food intake at every feeding--for two months after that, Rascal began to grow and gain weight, and eat full meals instead of tiny ones that weren't nourishing enough. By the age of four months, he was actually starting to get the dimpled knuckles of a healthy baby.

At a year old, he meets all the normal milestones for a child that age.  He is still on the small side of the charts, but so was his uncle, DS2 who could eat and eat and eat and had such a high metabolism that he gained weight slowly.  DS2 also had/has all kinds of environmental type allergies (animal dander, dust, mold, pollen, etc) as well as allergies to food additives, and I suspect that Rascal has many of the same.

Overall, though, he is a happy go lucky little boy who is working on being brave enough to let go of the furniture or the wall and just take off running.  Any day now.  :0)