Liam is up to 7 pounds, 1.5 ounces! He's gained 1 pound, 3 ounces in the last two weeks - enough to be done with weekly weigh-ins! The next appointment isn't until the two-month well check-up, just like all the regular kids!
Liam is close to being "term;" his due date is next Tuesday. I find myself in mental confusion deciding where exactly to peg my kid.
When somebody asked me how old Liam was today, I answered,"he's four weeks old, but he was five weeks early." I felt kind of dumb for saying that, like the lady who asked might be thinking," OK, freak, too much information," and yet, it seemed to be a good explaination of Liam's situation.
I also find myself grappling with the question of whether age is developmental or whether age is experience. For example it takes most newborns about a month to develop a circadian rhythm. Is this because it takes the supraoptic nucleus ten months after conception to mature of does it take this brain sensor a month of days and nights to learn the difference between the two?
Similarly, I know that the eyes must see in order to develop properly. In one seemingly cruel experiment, kittens were raised in an environment with only vertical lines. They were put in special head cones to keep them from even seeing the horizontal lines of their own body. When they became adults they were put in normal environments and had extreme difficulty perceiving horizontal elements (like they would fall down stairs, and off the edges of tables). It seems that their brain never learned to see these things. So now that Liam's brain has had a month to"learn" to see, should he be seeing like a one month old? Or are his visual pathways still to immature to even allow his brain to learn these things yet?
I know not to be overly concerned when Liam spends most of his waking time staring at the walls, but I still feel like it would be nice to know what to expect. Should he be starting to look at more interesting things, or does he have another month of wall staring?
Our eye doc friend says eye development is all based on gestational age. The pediatricians all favor gestational age over real age, too. So I guess Liam's month of "experience" counts for very little.
ReplyDeleteI was looking for info on the "Year of the Golden Pig" thing when I came across your site and had to read a little bit because my wife and I are expecting a baby in the next month, and Liam is the name we have picked if it's a boy (we didn't find out).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, now I feel like a copycat, but we're going to go ahead with it anyway.
By the way, I was born full term and weighed an ounce less than Liam!