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Natural Birth
mAnYaSha
member
Pediatrician fired us (vent)
mAnYaSha
member
Just wanted to share, I wish I thought more about this part to complete my beautiful homebirth experience because experience with our [ex]pediatrician has been horrible.
I will post our birth story in a bit. Baby Miles came November 2nd. Our pedi wanted to see him right away, so went went on Saturday. He said baby looked good, but was not too happy because he did not have all the standard info like he would from hospital birth. We did not have results for blood type until this afternoon, so pedi wanted us to do blood test that would give him blood type and belirubin count faster. We went by lab on Saturday and they could not get blood from his vein. MW came for a check and said baby was a little yellow, but no reason to worry, just to keep an eye on color and overall behavior. Pedi called later in the day telling us that color could not show how bad jaundice is and there is risk of brain damage, wanted us to go to hospital on sunday to get blood test done. Taking baby to hospital full of sick people and making extra holes in baby's veins did not seem like the right thing to do, so we did not. Today at follow up visit I said we did not go, so pedi told us to find another Dr. He looked over baby, who is gaining his weight back and is a little more yellow, but perfectly healthy otherwise and gave us paperwork for the blood test again. Crying, I agreed because he brought up brain damage again. Their on site lab tech spent 30 minutes, making holes in each arm and still did not get enough blood. Then they tried to give us papers to go to the hospital since they can collect blood from other places, meaning making more holes in my baby. I said HELL NO and walked about with the baby. Dr then called in a favor to hospital nursery to do skin test, which showed that count is not bad and we are supposed to go back tomorrow to get another reading. My baby has a nasty bruise on his arm and has been limp from all the stress and blood taken from him 
I still do not understand why they could not do heel prick like with DS #1 or do just do the skin test. Now I need to schedule interviews with other pediatricians and hopefully find one who cares more about his patients than his own ego. I cannot say that ur pedi is a bad Dr, but aparently he is not right Dr for our family.
Hopefully this story will help someone else to avoid such situation.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Pediatrician fired us (vent)
I'm so sorry. It sounds like this is a good thing though. You don't want to go to a doctor that doesn't respect your choices.
This is also why I waited until 2 weeks to show up with DD after our HB and also never told our family doc we were having a HB. DD had some serious jaundice, but I trusted my MWs advice about watching the color and if it spread down into her legs we needed to take her in. It got to her belly button and by 2 weeks had started to fade a little. I know my family doc would have wanted me to do the crazy blood tests every other day like I did with my boys, but I just didn't want to do it. And DD was just fine, so I'm glad I trusted my MWs.
My doc was also a little rattled because we didn't have all of the normal hospital paperwork. It was mostly because they had NEVER dealt with a homebirth before. They had no idea what to do about referring me for the newborn screening and where I should go for the standard nursery bloodwork. It was a big mess, but we finally got it all done.
I hope you find a new doctor that you love. Remember, this is for the best!
Thank you.
I told pedi about homebirth in June when we took DS#1 for his annual check up. If he had a problem with it, he should have said something then and we would have found new care then. He was pretty understanding in the past that I do not always fill in prescriptions he wrote, so I had no idea it would blow up this way. I was trying to cooperate and come right away as he wanted us to. I think his ego got ahead of him because we said midwife is doing newborn screen, etc. not him. His nurse was sweet though, she gave me a hug. Like you said, I trust my midwife's advise and I am upset that I let him bully me. I hope he feels like $h!t for causing little baby so much pain.
I got 2 recomendation that I think will work much better for us, I will be scheduling interviews tomorrow so I do not have to go back to pedi's office again.
That Dr. sounds like PITA! I work in a hospital lab, and we never do blood tests on babies unless there is real concern about the Bili levels. I can't believe he would pressure for that without doing just a skin test, or letting your LO spend some time with a bili-light first. And the blood type is only really important if the mother is rH negative, and you may have gotten preventative rho-gam anyways. Those are usually done off of cord blood, so I dont' know if your MW would have collected that.
It sounds like finding a new pedi is a good idea, and this guy needs to soften up a LOT!
I'm so sorry!
Had a similar experience after our home birth with our family doc. She wasn't happy that I was seeing MWs for the pregnancy and said she wanted to see DS within 5 days of him being born (even though she knew we would be under the MWs care until 6 weeks).
Of course, we took him in the his lowest weight day, just as my milk was coming in, and she sent us into panic mode and said he had to come back in three days for a weigh in and if he hadn't gained back to his birth weight we would have to start supplementing.
DS put his birth weight on and then some so that calmed her down.
The whole experience was a real downer. I wish I had just skipped seeing our family doc in the first weeks and let the MWs, who were awesome, do their jobs.
BFP #2 03/08/11 EDD 11/16/11 DD Born on 11/04/11
BFP #3 08/29/12 EDD 05/06/13 M/C on 08/30/12
BFP #4 11/01/12 EDD 07/09/2013 M/C on 12/28/12
BFP #5 04/30/13 EDD 01/03/14 DS Born on 01/02/14
BFP #6 01/11/15 EDD 09/22/15 M/C 03/09/15