I'm sorry. I'm especially sorry if you had non-baby children while I had a baby. Like all people with their first child, I was crazy.* I stopped the car every time the baby cried, instead of evaluating whether 1) it was less than ten minutes to get home and 2) whether the child would fall asleep on the way. I worried endlessly about stupid stuff** and was terrified to let my baby be unhappu, even though usually screaming was the worst that could happen.
I am now amply repaid by my local acquaintances who have recently welcomed first children. Dear readers, they are insane.
*Though I have never been crazy enough to take a 99th percentile four year old child to the doctor because the child had ONE DAY of diarrhea.
** Except that time he had pneumonia, when I should have been a tad more worried.
I was crazy, too. Vastly less crazy than many, but a little bit crazy. Speaking of which, I think this is super cool and may amuse you:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/
That is amazing.
DeleteAnd yes, weren't we all a little crazy?
People who were not raised in or have not at some point spent time in close proximity to biology/medical science have such touching faith in the whole thing. I remain flummoxed by friends' decisions to go see the doctor for ordinary colds in otherwise healthy non-newborns (and that's being generous). What, I always wonder, do they imagine the doctor can do?
ReplyDeleteMaaagic. They can.... tell them that sniffly children in otherwise good health, who are eating and drinking and breathing okay, should go home??
DeleteThat's actually my #1 criterion for taking kid to doctor: is there anything the doctor could even DO? And #2 is, are they sick enough that I would accept medication or equipment interventions? As in, trouble breathing, or refusing to eat, or an intractable high fever, or ear infection >7 days, or...
DeletePlus, is the chance that something the doctor would do/prescribe to help higher than the chance of picking up a new bug there? I love sitting between coughing schoolkids when waiting for my tiny baby's well-child visit...
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