Amelia's 18-month appointment
Sometimes you get entrenched, and then the years fly by, and you think to yourself "why are we still here?" and "why do we continue to torture ourselves like this?" When I was pregnant with Erika six years ago, I didn't know any pediatricians in our area, so I asked my OBGYN for some recommendations. She said she didn't know any of them personally, but gave me a list of ten practices that all were affiliated with the hospital I planned to birth at. I eliminated any practices with only one or two doctors, because I liked that my OBGYN practice had 5 doctors, 2 midwives, and 1 nurse practitioner. It meant there were a lot of appointment times available and a lot of flexibility with scheduling. I called the first practice and they didn't pick up. I called the second practice on the list, and made an appointment with them.
Fast forward five years later, and we are still at that practice, DESPITE them telling me I shouldn't co-sleep with my children, DESPITE them telling me to supplement with formula ('because breast milk is important, but it's not the most important thing" she said), DESPITE them telling me that she should wean at 1 year, DESPITE them telling me that "sometimes, you just need to let them cry [it out]" even though I had not brought it up (Amelia started to cry when she saw the nurse enter the room, and I immediately picked her up when she ran to me), so yeah, there were a lot of disagreements about child rearing with Erika, and then subsequently with Amelia, yet we stuck with them. Why? A mix of simple convenience, they had all our medical records, they knew the kids and the kids knew them, appointments were always easy to obtain (5 pediatricians and 2 nurse practitioners), so I would object, then grit my teeth, plaster a smile on, nod in agreement to end the conversation, and then go home and do what I felt was best (which for us, was co-sleep, breastfeed through the night, and attachment parenting all the time 24/7).
Finally, after a year of saying to each other that we really need to switch, WE FINALLY DID. It cost us $75 to do so (for medical records from the pediatrician, for real! They wouldn't release it to us directly and had to go through this third-party agent that charged us an arm and a leg...) and now we're at a new practice. It is farther from our house, it appears to be half the size of the previous practice, the building and furniture is clearly much older and hasn't been updated in 10 years, so now I'm second guessing myself. (Should I have stuck with the big, shiny, office space with new-fangled gadgets and hundreds of smiling faces of children from hundreds of Christmas/Hannukah cards?) Anyhow, we'll see.
So at Amelia's 18-month appointment on 9/24/2015, she is:
- weight: 26.5 lbs (87th percentile)
- length: 33 inches (85th percentile)
- head circumference: 18.5 inches (71th percentile)
Immunizations:
- Hib (#4)
- Flu
-DTap
Recommendations:
- car seat rear-facing until 2 years
- toothbrushing twice a day
- reduce whole milk consumption to ~18 oz/day
- get CBC/lead tested
- currently coughing (nasal drainage): review lungs if there is fever, increased coughing, or working harder to breathe
Follow-up at 2 years.
Fast forward five years later, and we are still at that practice, DESPITE them telling me I shouldn't co-sleep with my children, DESPITE them telling me to supplement with formula ('because breast milk is important, but it's not the most important thing" she said), DESPITE them telling me that she should wean at 1 year, DESPITE them telling me that "sometimes, you just need to let them cry [it out]" even though I had not brought it up (Amelia started to cry when she saw the nurse enter the room, and I immediately picked her up when she ran to me), so yeah, there were a lot of disagreements about child rearing with Erika, and then subsequently with Amelia, yet we stuck with them. Why? A mix of simple convenience, they had all our medical records, they knew the kids and the kids knew them, appointments were always easy to obtain (5 pediatricians and 2 nurse practitioners), so I would object, then grit my teeth, plaster a smile on, nod in agreement to end the conversation, and then go home and do what I felt was best (which for us, was co-sleep, breastfeed through the night, and attachment parenting all the time 24/7).
Finally, after a year of saying to each other that we really need to switch, WE FINALLY DID. It cost us $75 to do so (for medical records from the pediatrician, for real! They wouldn't release it to us directly and had to go through this third-party agent that charged us an arm and a leg...) and now we're at a new practice. It is farther from our house, it appears to be half the size of the previous practice, the building and furniture is clearly much older and hasn't been updated in 10 years, so now I'm second guessing myself. (Should I have stuck with the big, shiny, office space with new-fangled gadgets and hundreds of smiling faces of children from hundreds of Christmas/Hannukah cards?) Anyhow, we'll see.
So at Amelia's 18-month appointment on 9/24/2015, she is:
- weight: 26.5 lbs (87th percentile)
- length: 33 inches (85th percentile)
- head circumference: 18.5 inches (71th percentile)
Immunizations:
- Hib (#4)
- Flu
-DTap
Recommendations:
- car seat rear-facing until 2 years
- toothbrushing twice a day
- reduce whole milk consumption to ~18 oz/day
- get CBC/lead tested
- currently coughing (nasal drainage): review lungs if there is fever, increased coughing, or working harder to breathe
Follow-up at 2 years.