A healthy 15 month old

This morning, Rebecca had her 15 month well child visit and re-check on her allergies with Dr. Jeng. Unfortunately, her appointment ended up coinciding with naptime, and she was Miss Fussy Musserson about being sat on the scales to be weighed and at having anyone touch her with the stethescope. When Dr. Jeng dared to take out the otoscope, Rebecca screamed and clapped her hands over her ears. No problems with her ears or throat, which is another sign that her allergies are responding to the treatment. He wasn't able to hear her heart murmur, but her lack of cooperation could have been the reason for that. Luckily, mommy came equipped with Cat Cookies for People (I love Trader Joes' names for things), so all was well when those came out.

Rebecca weighs in 18 lbs, 12 oz. and is 29 3/4 inches tall, putting her just under the 5th percentile for weight and the 25th percentile for height. Dr. Jeng isn't concerned about her growth and thinks she is just destined to be tiny. He also was totally unconcerned about her loathing of cow's milk, since she is still breastfeeding. He said there was nothing magical about cow's milk and agreed that the breastmilk was better for her than anything else, and that she is getting plenty of fat (plus antibodies) from it and that she gets calcium through other sources.

Developmentally, she is doing fine - her gross and fine motor skills are especially advanced (she danced for Dr. Jeng and unzipped her purse to pull out the toys she wanted, then threw her purse over her shoulder and ran across the room). Her social and language development is on target or advanced. Dr. Jeng and I discussed how she is doing on the Singulair and Zyrtec and whether there is anything to be gained at this point from doing allergy testing. He strongly suspects that her allergies are environmental. If we thought they were food or contact-based, then it seems logical to do the testing so that we could control her environment. But since that doesn't seem to be the case, his argument was that we can't really control the pollen in the San Gabriel Valley, as long as her symptoms are controlled, there probably isn't much to be gained from allergy testing. If the meds don't continue to control her allergies, then he would definitely want to refer her to an allergist for testing, and he suggested that it would be a good idea to have the testing done at some point anyway.

I also talked to him about my concerns about the MMR vaccine and told him that I wanted to delay it. He was totally fine with that, discussed the research with me, and agreed with me that it seemed that the benefits of the vaccine really didn't outweigh the risks for her at this point. He then qualified that by saying that that was his opinion as her personal physician and not as a public health official. She got her 4th DTaP vaccine though. He proclaimed her "beautiful, funny, and perfect."