Today was Ellie's six month paediatric review. We got a call yesterday to say that Doctor Funk wouldn't be available, but we would been seen by a locum. I should have known that it was a bad sign, but I naively agreed to keep the appointment.
Because he was unfamiliar with Ellie's history we had to go through everything again. Do these doctors that are too lazy to read a file not realise that they force the parents to relive the trauma every time? I choke up when I have to talk about what happened to Ellie. He had the gall to describe it all as "very exciting, I've never seen a case that low before." Great. So glad my daughter's fight to survive excites you so much buddy.
He then started his attack. "We'll, it's obvious by the size of her that she certainly doesn't have reflux. We'll take her off the Zantac.... She's obese, you need to reduce her feeds.... She has oddly shaped ear drums.... Why isn't she babbling yet...." He just kept going and going,
Any mother is going to take offence to such an onslaught of criticism towards their child. I'm actually quite proud that I didn't smack the idiot in the face. Instead I calmly explained to him that he wasn't the doctor who prescribed the Zantac so he wouldn't be touching the dosage at all. In fact, I was planning to get her dosage increased because she had started vomiting more and more, but I let that slide and decided to carry on experimenting until we found the right one on our own.
The obese comments shook me. I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded, all the while thinking "are you bleating serious?" By the time he got to her oddly shaped ear drums I just wanted to leave.
The problem was, the whole way home in the car, and the rest of the afternoon I felt like crying. I have fought so hard over the last six months to get Ellie to feed. We've spent hundreds of dollars on expensive, specialised feeding equipment. I've sat for hours, syringeing milk into her mouth when she couldn't take a bottle because her palate was damaged from the bottles. I've overcome the reflux and the projectile vomiting, and we've achieved the almost-impossible - a cubby cleft kid.
But now here's this doctor, telling me that I've been doing the wrong thing all along. My baby isn't a healthy little girl that's thriving better than anyone expected. No, she's obese, and needs to be put on a diet because I'm over feeding her. Talk about a slap in the face!
Ellie isn't over fed. She has the exact amount of feeds that a baby her age is supposed to have. So what he said just didn't make sense to me. How can you over feed a baby by following the instructions you've been given? And more pressingly, how exactly do you reduce a baby's feeds? I can tell you, when Ellie is hungry she lets you know it. And he drains her bottles, sometimes demanding more (which I don't give her because, funnily enough, I don't want to over-feed her). I've watched her go through the baby-disaster that is wanting a feed that never comes, for 10 horrendous hours pre-surgery. I want to avoid putting her through that as much as I can.
But the biggest thing for me is that she has weight behind her for surgery. Ellie has two big operations coming up on her mouth in the next six months. I saw how much trouble she had with feeding after the lip repair, and Doctor Kimble has said that the palate repairs will be harder on her, and the recovery will take longer. So in my mind, she needs as much extra weight as she can get. Not only does it help her get through the surgeries themselves, but it helps her in recovery if her body isn't fighting to store what little energy it can take in while she's barely eating or drinking.
It took a lot of reassurance from friends and perfect strangers for me to let those comments go. I need to trust in myself and my abilities as a parent more, and learn when to ignore idiotic doctors. But these people get paid big money so that we will believe in them.
POSTSCRIPT:
It took me the better part of a month to write this post. I wrote up all of the other appointments and kept them as drafts until this one was finished. The problem was, every time I sat down to record the words of that stupid so-called doctor I got so angry I had to move on to other things. After a couple of weeks I realised that I shouldn't have to feel like that, and I lodged a for mail complaint about him. I want all the parents out there to know that they don't have to sit back and take it. If a doctor makes you feel bad about your parenting, speak up. Change doesn't happen by complaining to our friends and family, it happens by pointing out the errors to the people in charge: in this case, the Department of Health and Human Services Tasmania.
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