Our baby, our balloon

That babies "grow very fast" is not a particularly original observation. But our baby seems to grow, then ungrow, then grow, then ungrow...

Many weeks ago, we blogged that Sonny was getting rather round (click here to read that post). However, the young fella has since been behaving like a balloon: Some days, he seems to have inflated as though someone had blown air into him; other days, he looks somehow slimmer, as though the balloon had sprung a leak. This morning was an air-in day: As Pa was handing Sonny over to the folks at the infant care centre, he was struck by how roly-poly our son appeared to be. His cheeks were round and juicy and his drumstick thighs ready for the barbecue. Yet just a week or so ago, he'd been looking positively lean.

Could this be? Sonny, who's less than a fortnight away from starting his sixth month with us, seems to specialise in implausible growth patterns. Mum has an even more extreme observation to report: Every other day, she will tell Pa, straight-faced, that Sonny has "grown overnight". If this were true for each time she's voiced this, and even if we assumed the tiniest of mini-upsizings, Sonny would be busting the ceiling and weighing more than his parents. Yet we know that he's not really a giant baby: There's another infant, more or less his contemporary at the infant care centre, who's as swollen as a melon and so fat he gives Pa mild nightmares. Yet there's something vaguely unearthly about the way Sonny's plumpness quotient seems to fluctuate.

Mind you, during our monthly visits to the polyclinic, when the nurse takes her measurements, the results show a regular, unremarkable increase. So all's well, physically. We're familiar with the idea that babies do not grow at a slow but steady pace, but rather in spurts, with 'lull growth periods' in between. So we have to assume that he's entering - perhaps unsteadily - spurt mode. Two related factors may further explain his recent 'expansion': A lingering cold, that has been bothering him for weeks, seems to have been finally banished. He also seems to have recovered his appetite for milk, which had had slackened off at the end of July (as reported in 'Less food, more worry').

Maybe we should be worrying instead about Pa's own weight, which has been creeping up rather more steadily...