Vaccination time :(

Yoni went to the the pediatrician the Monday before last for his monthly exam. He weighed in at 10lbs on the dot and was 21.75 inches long. His noggin got a bit bigger too, but I don't recall the exact figure. To reward him for his voracious appetite which led to this increase in volume, he was given his first set of vaccines (although he got Hep B in the maternity ward; I guess there must be a lot of needle sharing amongst the newborns in the maternity ward).

Yoni got a shot in each pulki (thigh). After each, his mouth opened as if to scream and his face turned bright red, and this was followed by a horrible wail (no biblical allusion intended). Happily, he was consolable with some hand holding, shushing, and breast feeding. In the picture below, if you look closely, you can see a band-aid on each pulki (and in the picture below you can see that Yoni is in his John Wayne outfit).

Yoni went to be early that night, but started stirring around 9pm, when usually he wouldn't get up for a snack until at least midnight. His stirring led to some crankiness, which led to inconsolable crying. The pediatrician had mentioned that muscular knots may form at the injection site, making him uncomfortable, so we checked. Instead of a knot, we found that his left calf was bright red and warm. We paged our ped, who got back to us very quickly. He instructed us to give him some baby Tylenol (which we had on hand from the big snip), and apply a warm compress. Prior to calling our ped, I came up with the idea of putting a cold compress on it (whoops). We marched the crying Yoni around for about 30-45 minutes before he finally started calming down. Yael was very upset (as was I) at Yoni's inconsolable discomfort, and did a little crying of her own (I gave her some Tylenol and put a warm compress on her). The Tylenol had kicked in, and we all breathed a big sigh of relief. Poor little Yonster. This was our first real experience of seeing the little Yoni in real pain; we're not looking forward to the next time.


Below is proof that Yoni really did survive his vaccinations and is a happy little baby again. He's playing in his play-gym with, from left to right, Sally the shy sheep, Penny the porcupine, and Harry the happy horse. The blue homentash looking thing behind the animals contains a pressure sensitive musical player, that will play 3 or 4 different tunes when you hit it. We use it for musical interludes between the stimulating conversations that Sally, Penny, and Harry have.

Yoni also has tummy time on the mat. In addition to building his neck muscles, he likes to lick the mat and see how big of a drool puddle his can make. Right now his record is 8.23 inches in diameter.


I don't know if it was the vaccine or what, but Yoni has gotten very good at smiling recently. Here he is after being told the Aristocrat joke; he has a very warped sense of humor.