Friends of mine recently had a gorgeous wee bub whom we went to visit in hospital, whilst there we noticed the new Dad had a nasty rash. Nothing to strange in that as he suffers a great deal from eczema and as you know I can relate, well Abbey can. Turns out he had shingles. That didn't make me mad, that broke my heart. Can you imagine not being able to hold your newborn? I can't and he couldn't. He could gaze at her lovingly from across the room, I cried when they told me, well when I was off the phone as the new Mummy was teary and I didn't need to add to her hormones. But I digress...
A week later the Princess had two spots on her face, she has had the chicken pox vaccine but we thought we'd get her checked out anyway as she had been off her food. Cue visit to the local Doctors.
Our local Doctors are lovely, you can see anyone and it is a wonderful multi-cultural mix with some rather gorgeous young English doctors that make you want to become a hypochondriac so you can flash them your boobs. Digressing again, sorry.
We saw a new South African Doctor and discussed rugby (as you do) well he talked to Mr P about it, Mr P handballed to me as usual! Why do men assume that the man is the one into sport?
Anyhow the spots were insect bites nothing to worry about, he told us how he gets quite exciting about shingles as it is a fascinating disease (sigh - well he is a Doctor). Then we moved onto the food issue...
He gave us a talk about childhood obesity and how children eat too many snacks etc and that the Princess had probably developed a sweet tooth (no denying that) but then... he had the absolute gall to look at the Princess and without so much as weighing her, seeing how tall she is, even looking at her belly, he pronounced...
'She's chubby, you need to watch her food intake'. EXCUSE ME?! I was stunned so any comment, comeback, slap to the forehead, I usually would have given passed me by. For one of the very few times in my life I was speechless. Tears welled in my eyes as I thought what a nerve this man had. How dare he foster body image issues onto my daughter (well me) now when she is only 21 months old. We smiled and did the pleasantries and left. We got in the car and I was 'WTF'!
We got home and I raced to the bible blue book (Maternal and Child Health provided diary of your child's well being and guidelines). I then measured the princesses height and stuck her on the scales. Went back to the book and graphed her... She is between the 50 and 60th percentiles. That means she is a perfect weight and height for her age.
Granted she has full cheeks but if that Doctor had actually done some doctoring and measured and weighed her rather than making an assessment based on looking at her he may have changed his mind.
I asked another Doctor this week when I went in for an unrelated matter, his opinion 'No, she's perfect. You have a beautiful and healthy wee girl'. So there.
The wee miss catching raindrops during a storm, photo was taken the same week we went to the Doctor!
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3 comments:
All my kids have bull dog chubby cheeks until they are 5. Cute as heck, and it's not from eating too much, I can barely pin them down to ram an apple down their throat.
Doctors irritate me.
Oh Ness, I can really sympathise with this one. Dante was ALWAYS a chubby baby, right from the start. He was around 50th percentile in length/height and 90th in weight! I remember at his 4 month check up the midwives told me to stop giving him as much milk and replace it with water if he was really starving. I totally disregarded their advice - fancy starving a 4 month old, my intuition told me that if he was hungry then I would feed him. Turns out I have had nothing to worry about, he is a strong healthy boy, he is not skin and bone but he is not fat, and he is even starting to loose that baby chubbiness that I so love. Don't worry - trust your instincts and know that your little princess looks a picture of health!
PS - I have missed you! how are you going??
Thanks ladies, it irked me that
someone in such a position of authority could say something like that without actually doing any form of examination!
I'm good, busy! I'm now an Avon rep (shush!) so am finding my feet with that as well as I was doing some contract work for some friends, all with the goal of getting to Rarotonga in May for my sisters wedding! I'm not sure where time goes these days! x
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