Happy 11 months Henry!!

 Happy 11 months Henry!!

Weight: 22lbs 2.3oz (51st percentile)

Length: 30.5" long (80th percentile)

Clothes:  He is wearing all 12 month clothes and some 18 month stuff too. I'm kind of amazed how true to size he has been with clothing his whole life. I just ordered him a TON of new clothes for his birthday. Like a massive box with probably 40 things in it all to get ready for spring and summer. Shorts, t-shirts, onesies, pants, hoodies and light weight jackets, long sleeve shirts and shoes, one peice rompers etc etc etc. I can't wait for him to be able to wear it all.

Likes:  He still loves to eat and he still loves his Cora. Other than that he is loving being on the move. He crawls so fast and pulls up and cruises around furniture and people and whatever else he can. He will stand unassisted for up to 1 minute before he realizes he's not holding on to anything and will grab on to something before he falls. He likes his go go smart wheels garage and signing trucks and cars and his little baby boombox. He LOVES to snuggle.

Dislikes: Being stuck! put in the pack n' play while we get ready for the day or being contained in his play yard in the living room or having to sit in his high chair while I get food ready or after he is finished. Home boy wants to rome! Case in point: fake crying when he wants out of his high chair after breakfast.

 Hahahah!

Sleeping: He is sleeping sooo well lately! This is our biggest accomplishment for the month. He was having a hard time last month with waking up once a night or even twice and now he is sleeping from 8pm-7:30am every single night. He rarely wakes up and will usually go back to sleep on his own or just with a quick acknowledgment and a pacifier replaced. He then takes really predictable naps now too. He is finally on a schedule! He sleeps from 10am-noon and then from 2 or 3pm- 4 or 4:30pm. It's so nice knowing! My type A heart is singing with joy!

 

Smiling in his sleep. ^^^^ So cute!

Eating: He loves eating as usual. He is no longer doing any purees (he hasn't for awhile actually). He eats all table food, three meals a day plus a snack and now is taking three bottles a day of breastmilk and whole milk 50/50. We have been mixing my frozen breastmilk in with the whole milk starting exactly at 11 months and will add more and more milk and less breastmilk to transition him completely to whole milk by his first birthday. He is no longer nursing as of tomorrow night. We have weaned the past month or two and cut out one nursing session/ day each week and replaced it with food or a bottle of frozen milk. I nursed him at night this week and that's it so as of monday we are done nursing and as of tonight (I work) I am done pumping. I am so thrilled to be done pumping as I HATED it but I am really sad to be done nursing. Henry has done fantastic with the transition, better than I have I think so it's been as good as I could have expected. I will do a blog post soon completely on weaning. Stay tuned. 

 Tailgating so to speak.

Playing: He is a champ at playing by himself lately. Which is awesome because it lets me get things done during the day.

 

This is sweat after a nap...gross!!!!!

Other Milestones: He started standing unassisted like I said early and he is starting to walk with us holding his hands. He used to just buckle his knees and try to get down to the floor to crawl but I have helped him and encouraged him and now he is actually trying it. He has 7 teeth now and is working on 8 and 9. He is trying to talk more and more and has added "uh-oh" and "hi" to his word bank. And he got a new carseat! He is too big for his infant seat so he gets a big boy convertible carseat now.

What Dr. Grossman Said: We will see him for his one year appointment. Until then we saw Henry's nephrologist (kidney doctor) for an update. He has hydronephrosis if I haven't updated on that much before. They diagnosed him in utero when I was doing my weekly scans to watch for his high risk for spina bifida and my placenta health. This means he literally has water inside his kidneys that can't get out causing his kidneys to be enlarged. We have been watching both kidneys with ultrasounds since he was 3 days old and they seemed to be improving so we got to space out our follow ups a little bit. His last scan was in August and we got to wait 6 months to be seen again due to the improvement he had been making. This time however, his scan showed his left kidney looks great. Yay! But his right kidney has gotten significantly worse and is now in the "severe" category. Because of this, they are referring us to urology to be seen and determine what we can do. Hydronephrosis is common, especially in boys and it often resolves on it's own providing there is no specific cause that needs to be treated, such as an obstruction in his ureter (the tube going from his kidney to his bladder) or urinary reflux (where his bladder squeezes to empty when he pees and instead of all the urine going out, some refluxes back up the ureter into his kidneys). We ruled out both of those things with a special scan and procedure when he was 8 weeks old and thus were told it should go away on it's own by the time he is a year. Since it is not resolving and actually getting worse, his nephrologist doesn't believe it will resolve on it's own at this point. Thus, we are revisiting the possibility of mild obstruction and urology may need to go in a remove the obstruction and place a stent so that Henry doesn't have damage to his kidney in the long run limiting it's function and growth. As a nurse, this is common and easily treated. As a momma, this is kinda scary. I just don't want my baby to have to go through anything painful. For now he is fine and totally unaffected. His lab work for his kidney function is normal (he didn't even cry when he got poked by the way) and we are just waiting to be seen by urology to further determine what comes next. Prayers for healing would greatly be appreciated. Oh and just because you CAN live with only one kidney, doesn't mean you should or you want to. Both of his kidneys are at risk for issues and having one functioning one that could also be ultimately at risk is no reassurance for us to ignore this.

And on a happier note. Here are the hilarious outtakes of his photo shoot this month, which was a joke because he wouldn't sit still.