Callum The Human Pincushion

So this morning was Callum's 12-month well-baby visit to the pediatrician. He weighed in at 25.9 pounds (11.7 kilograms) and was 32 inches (81.2 centimeters) tall.

The doctor was happy with his development. She does want us to ween him off of bottles and move entirely onto sippy cups. We will see how Callum feels about this tonight. He has been drinking water from a sippy cup for a while and actually increasing his intake that way, so maybe he will be OK with it. She also wants us to basically move him completely onto table foods, which we have already started. Just last night I cooked Callum a salmon and rice dish from one of the toddler cook books we have. He seemed quite happy with it.

Unfortunately for Callum though, the 12 month visit comes with 4 vaccinations. Plus, just to add insult to injury he needed to get the 2nd half of the flu shot he had before we went to Australia, so that meant 5 needles today. 3 in the legs and 2 in the arms. Understandably, he screamed like a baby as they were administered.

To add further injury to insult he also needed to have some blood taken for a routine CBC test. Callum had some blood taken right after he was born, and then again the day after we left the hospital when he was jaundiced, but nothing since and that was all taken from the heel. Today they wanted arm veins. The kid is no dummy. He knew something bad was about to happen based on the 5 jabs he had had a mere few minutes before upstairs. As soon as I took his top off he was crying and squirming. The lab technician selected her target arm, I held the other arm and legs and in the needle went - kind of. He squirmed so much she was having trouble keeping the needle in the vein, and eventually the needle popped out of his arm altogether. She didn't even fill one tube and she needed to get two tubes worth. So she taped him up and we flipped him over and started again on the other arm. Success this time, though Callum did his best to thwart our efforts.

So if you weren't counting, that was a total of 7 needles this morning. Even for an adult that would be a lot. He had so many band-aids and cotton balls taped to him when we left, it was almost comical, if it wasn't for the glassy eyes and pitiful sobs of course.

Conveniently Jen was not available for the appointment today because she was out of town. Coincidence???

I looked up his test results tonight online and they all looked normal based on my layman's understanding of the situation.