First pediatrican visit. Compare and contrast with midwives.

Ivy went outside for the second time!

First time in the car and car seat though. Hospital is 3-minutes away. She fell asleep most of the trip and in the seat when we got home for 2 hours.

At the Pediatrician's Office

We went to a 10 day pediatrician appointment. Mary the midwife has been coming every few days as well to inspect, must be on her 12th or so visit including before birth. She advised to wait at least two weeks to go to pediatrician office, as long as everything is fine.
 
There's an interesting tug of war between midwives and doctors.

Measured at home

Home midwife check-ups ever few days.

Our first midwife with Shaw said not to bring the baby into a pediatrician's office, unless there were issues from her home checkups, or our concerns for 6 weeks!

Her resoning was sound, there are too many sick folks there for a little baby to be exposed to needlessly!

The pediatrician's say, they need to see the kids early to catch stuff and get them in their records.

I say, pediatrician's should make one house call per new patient, when they are two weeks old. Then the baby comes in to the office at the two month old mark.

If they want the business, they need to do this one house call.

Anyway...

We went in at two weeks with Shaw, also good with us. With Ivy, they of course said, "come back in 4 days for a quick weight check, we need to check them when they get back to their birth weight."

The midwife said that's silly, she's been weighing her. But of course the info is shared automatically, has to be faxed. We'll look back on this time in 20 years with horror in terms of information management.

I don't think we will go back in four days. The midwife will weigh her, and we'll let them know the weight.

The pediatrician was fine, reassuring to have a second opinion ,she cleaned out Ivy's belly button, which still has some blood, and she said it was a "deep one" and to keep it clean with Q tips. Of course the midwife said,  don't need to clean it, it's made to take care of itself.

We'll make the calls between the two approaches. Use each one for it's strong suit and for balance. So far, all healthy.