The Journey of Parenthood…

Spear’s 3 Year Old Well-Check Pediatrician Visit

Spear’s 3 Year Old Well-Check Pediatrician Visit

I am thankful Spear’s annual pediatrician well-check visits are typically super close to his birthday. It’s such a pain to get them back on schedule when you get off the routine and I much prefer to have their check-ups as close to their birthdays as possible.

SUCH a big boy carrying in his little book bag of toys 😉

His well check up was on December 9th and I picked him up early from school to take him. I have learned to be OVER prepared for these check-ups. You may wait 10 min. You may wait 2 hours so we had snacks and toys and lunch ready to go!

He did SO GREAT and it was such a big boy kinda outing. I was so proud of how well he waited patiently in the waiting room and how well he minded the nurses and staff.

We first went into a triage room to have his height and weight check and they also did a hearing check.

I will never have a baby scale again! He did great getting all of his stats taken. He had some trouble with the traditional hearing test – as it was tricky for him to understand to raise his hand when he heard a sound.

So they had to do an inner ear hearing test where they put little ear plug type things in his ears to test his hearing. He did SUPER well with that as well as I’m sure it was confusing and a bit uncomfortable. The nurse let me know right then in the room that he did FAIL the hearing test in BOTH ears.

I was surprised by that but also a bit encouraged as he has been in speech therapy for quite awhile now and has ALWAYS had so much drainage (like since he was itty bitty) that it’d be awesome to have a REASON behind his speech stuff and a COMMON culprit is fluid in the ears making things sound “underwater.”

We read books and played while we waited and Spear has always been my kid who is more interested in what’s going on and the inner workings of things than he is in toys. He was ALL about peeking into the hallway to see the staff working and asking me questions about what they were doing while we waited.

His doctor came in and did the regular check-up. Developmentally he is right on target (always a blessing to hear) and his check-up looked good. Healthy boy!

He had to have his finger pricked to test his hemoglobin and I was a bit nervous about that as usually Daddy comes to appointments that require any needles – but he was a CHAMP and watched the needle go in and didn’t even flinch!

At three years old Spear is 36.5 inches tall (in the 45th percentile) and weighs 30 lbs (in the 20th percentile).

To compare at his 2.5 well check (which was in July so less than 6 months) he was 36.25 inches tall and weighs 27.8 pounds. He was in the 50th percentile for both height and weight.

They did not say it was concerning that he’s dropped a bit in percentages and that it’s not a drastic drop off to be concerned about!

In comparing to his siblings:

At 3 years old Kye was 33.5 lb (50th percentile), 37 inches/3 ft 1 inch tall (25th percentile)

At 3 years old Britt was 38 inches tall (90th percentile) and 29 pounds (35th percentile)

At 3 years old Tess was 36.5 inches tall (35th percentile), 28.5 lbs (25th percentile).

So interesting that he and Tess are the exact height at this age. And they both dropped a bit in percentile in comparison to their prior well-visit.

We’re pretty confident that Spear will be on the shorter side. Mama E is my height (5’2″) and his birth father is also on the shorter side (5’8″). (Whew I went to look up the birth father’s height and went down the rabbit hole of reading through our adoption journey – I still get chills and tears reliving the moment when we got MATCHED!).

I stuck his birth parents stats into the height predictor and it says he will be 5’7″ at age 18 (ironically that’s also the predicted height Britt will be at age 18 too ha!).

We had so much fun playing “doctor” with his doggie too during our wait!

It turns out that Spear’s failure of the hearing tests lead to the dr checking his ears and realizing he’s been walking around with a DOUBLE ear infection. Literally showed NO symptoms other than being a bit rougher than usual behavior wise (which I’ve heard is common). No fever, no complaining. NOTHING.

We did antibiotics to treat the ear infection and had an appointment to bring him back for another ear check a few weeks later to make sure the antibiotics worked!

I did opt out of the flu shot this year for him as he (shocker) had a runny nose and with the ear infection I obviously didn’t want to add more into his system.

Overall it was a GREAT appointment. I’m just so blessed to be his mama and so thankful for the amazing care Mama E gave her sweet boy to allow him to be so healthy and thriving!

Emily Parker
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