Dec 30: One Month Checkup at the Pediatrician

Hard to believe it has been a month already! Annelies has been eating well, and growing. We had a good checkup today. The Pediatrician (Dr. Hopper in Roseville) is AWESOME. I am so glad I found her all these years ago, she has been our family Doctor, Marco's Pediatrician and now also for Annelies. She is about my age, so a lot of her training is pretty current. She has experience with Ds, and has high hopes for Annelies. We had a long talk about how even in the last 10-15 years, many things have changed. Kids with Ds are getting better and better guidance and health care, and are growing/thriving better than ever before. The charts that show the averages are just that, it can be normal to be above or below those average numbers.
Annelies was 21 3/4 inches tall and weighed in at 9 lbs 8 oz. These numbers put her in the 80-90 percentile on the 'regular' charts (Dr Hopper is going to keep her on those for now). Her head measured in the 40th percentile (that is significant because kids with Ds can have smaller heads, from the latest numbers I read they tend to be in the 3rd percentile on average. )
Overall, I am not too worried about those percentiles. I almost drove myself crazy keeping track of the numbers with Marco (first child, you want all indicators to be good...etc etc).
Overall, I think it is good to know where you stand and to keep track of the growth but it is good to know what is normal for the child, what are his/her own trends, and if they deviate from that, then you can figure out why that is.
For Annelies' sake, I am glad she is growing and gaining weight. I think it is normal to feel that way about any child, though. It is just that after reading so much about Ds, there can be so many problems, it is nice to see that so far, she is good.
At one month, Annelies holds her head up at a 45 degree angle for a half a minute, while laying on Aaron's chest. She also holds her head up when she is picked up, most of the time. Her muscle tone is very decent (it was described to me as low-normal).