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First time mums

Pediatric appointment anxiety

My daughter is almost 9 months old and I still get anxiety going to the pediatrician based off of my very first interaction with a pediatrician outside of the hospital. I’m sharing this story partially so other new moms can kind of be more aware of who they choose as pediatricians, but also partially just to vent. Buckle up it’s a long one.

So when I had my daughter, I had to have an emergency C-section and I was in the hospital for three days while I was there I was not fully like cognitive that first day and so my husband was kind of like the primary parent, he was the one asking the nurses all of these questions like when do we feed her? How do I swaddle her? Can you teach me how to change her diaper? Like all of these things that we already kind of knew how to do, but we wanted to make sure we were doing correctly. We took their advice and we ran with it because their nurses and why wouldn’t we take their advice? We get the clear from all of the nurses the hospital pediatrician everyone we’re supposed to get the OK to leave. The hospital. Gives us the OK to leave the hospital.

The day after I get released from the hospital, we have our very first pediatrician appointment. Me and my husband are going to this appointment with Hope in our hearts very excited. And we get there and he asks us how much she weighed at birth, which was 8 lbs. 11 oz.. and when he weighed her, she was 7 lbs. 11 oz. this was a drastic fucking change and it scared the ever living fuck out of me and my husband. He asked us how often we were feeding her. And if we were doing formula or just breastmilk and at the time, I was just breast-feeding and I told him I nurse her every four hours for about 15 minutes because she doesn’t stay awake for feedings and she has a hard time latching, and this is what the nurses in the hospital told me to do and he told me that I need to be nursing her every two hours for 30 minutes and I need to make sure she’s awake and that I am malnutritioning my daughter. And my heart sinks into my ass. I’m four days postpartum. I am still having trouble walking because I was in a bed for three days fucking straight without moving. My C-section wound is still healing. I immediately shut down. My husband is asking him all of these questions and he’s kind of pushing him off like they don’t matter. We’re giving him all of this paperwork that we brought from the hospital like tracking her feeding tracking her diapers and he doesn’t even fucking look at it he just accuses us of being terrible parents for not feeding our daughter properly when it’s what we were told in the fucking goddamn hospital. And when they waited her before we left and we questioned it they told us yeah it’s normal for babies to lose weight but he made it seem like if we didn’t get her weight up in a week he was gonna call CPS on us.

He tells us we should probably give her formula since she’s having trouble latching and my heart fucking breaks because it’s not the journey I envisioned, but I don’t want my daughter to starve I am struggling to breast-feed. It has been really fucking hard. We end up leaving this pediatrician appointment feeling heartbroken feeling guilty. We couldn’t stop sobbing for like three hours straight.

We started formula I started pumping and we did mixed feeding and a week later we went back in her weight was back up, and we left that appointment and immediately changed pediatricians because if that’s how our very first appointment is gonna go with him if he’s not gonna answer any of our questions if he’s gonna kind of dismiss us and make us feel like terrible parents we’re not gonna continue to go to him. We found a new pediatrician. We told her our situation and she was taken a back by how awful our first experience was. She reassured us that it’s completely normal for babies to lose weight after you give birth to them that we are doing everything right and that our baby is completely fucking healthy and that she is so sorry that someone made us feel like we’re terrible parents.

Even though we know our daughter is completely healthy. And we love our new pediatrician. I can’t help but get an anxious every time we go thinking that they’re gonna tell us we’re bad parents just based off of that one interaction with this pediatrician that the hospital recommended by the way. We supposed to say make sure you do extensive research on pediatricians before you give birth. Try and do as much research as you can prior to giving birth. I know it’s hard. I know you’re tired. That’s the one reason I went into the hospital, not knowing anything was because I was too tired to do the research. And I so regret it.

I hope this story helps others. Feel free to share your horrible pediatrician stories. With me!