Mommy PhD

As a new mother you don't know what to expect and so you hang by every word of the pediatrician. After the first year you get the hang of it and you have the training wheels off and you can sense things now. By the 2nd and 3rd years you are a "resident" and by 4th year and beyond, you are the real mccoy. Also, you have the Mommy gut feeling which some pediatricians don't have because they don't have children! Now some don't believe in that, but I do...totally! It's a 7th sense.

I love how medicine changes. I always thought having a 102 fever is a fever and that warrants Tylenol or SOMETHING, but nope these days it's really a fever until it's 104 or higher! Really?! I need to wait until my child is on the edge of brain damage before I give them something? So I really don't believe in that. If my kids have a fever, even if it's 101, I'll give them Tylenol. As a working mom, I don't have time to wait for them to work itself out.

Then this whole thing with ear infections. Now the doctors don't like to treat them right away. Are they serious?!? "Come back in a few days if they don't feel better and then we'll give you antibiotics" Again, who has time for this?! Good lord, and why make the child suffer through the pain when they don't have to?!?! I just don't get it.

So this past weekend we did a family field trip to BJs and as we were checking out the kids were horsing around against my advice. I looked over and Madison had run straight into a cement pole and was crying. Great. She had a scratch on her head, but no bumps and no blood. So I didn't make anything of it. On the drive home, she fell asleep in the car, typical, so again, didn't think anything of it. When we got home I made them lunch, she didn't want to eat, said her head hurt and wanted to go back to sleep. THEN I had this bad feeling that I just might be taking a trip to the ER. So without putting ideas in her head I asked her why she wanted to nap and if she was hungry, she said she was tired and was being a little whiny. Again, sort of typical of her to be whiny and milking her injury. In the middle of her sleep she turned over and said that she felt like throwing up but she wasn't going to. That's when I knew I better make a call to her PCP, so I did. The oncall nurse called me back and I described the events to her. She advised me to wake her up and take her to the ER. When we woke her up she in fact did throw up and so I took her in. When the ER pediatrician came to see her Madison was having a fit because she did not want to put on the little "johnny" and was backed into a corner crying. The dr asked "is this behavior a result from the injury?" and I had to laugh and answer "NO, she's normally this difficult." So we did compromise with her and did not make her change. I did learn at that point that with head injuries "the first one is free." I was informed that normally with these types of injuries, 4-5 hours after the accident if symptoms of headaches and vomiting does not increase to 2 or 3 times it is ok!

I can appreciate new science and medicine however there are some old school ways that I still buy into. Unless it is to improve and it has worked in the past, why change it? So I think I will use MY mommy PhD and do what works for my kids in treating fevers and injuries and insist on antibiotics for things such as ear infections when we know as a mom that there IS one there and it's NOT going away magically. And then if we come across things that are more involved than what my mommy PhD covers I'll listen to our pediatrician whole heartedly!