Today's Lesson: Little & Big

Henry was born at 36 weeks and 6 days. He was a little peanut and weighed in at a whopping 5 lb. 9 oz. (and weighed 5 lb. 4 oz. by the time we left the hospital!). They detected a heart murmur in those first few hours...and monitoring him included checking his blood pressure from time to time. For some reason, they throw away the little blood pressure arm cuffs they use, so the nurses asked me if I wanted to take it home for his baby book (yeah, the one that doesn't exist? and he's almost 2? right, that one.)


I happened upon the little cuff in a drawer the other day and marveled at how TINY it was. Here it is next to a normal, adult sized blood pressure cuff. (The little cuff was for preemies, so it was even SMALLER than baby sized ones).


Speaking of preemie sizes...even though Henry was on the CUSP of being considered a preemie, he was small enough that he absolutely SWAM in newborn sized clothes (the "going home outfit" I packed didn't fit him until he was almost 3 months old!). I ended up having to run out to the store that first week to buy a few preemie outfits. He didn't wear P size for long (4-6 weeks?), but it was long enough that he needed *something* to wear.

While there are certainly twins that are born in the 7-8 pound range EACH, *most* healthy, good sized twins are in the 5 lb. range. As a result, I went ahead and bought a few little preemie outfits, just in case.

For reference, I took a picture of a preemie sized onesie/shirt...alongside a newborn sized onesie. Both are Carter's brand, so it's a real "apples to apples" comparison:

And just to further illustrate the size difference, the next shirt in the photo below is 0-3 months:


Happy Thursday!