Bad Parent: The Sickest Baby on the Block
After months of "wait and see," I finally embraced modern medicine.
by Kim Brooks
March 12, 2009
And like most parents of "basically healthy" kids, I had been operating under the assumption that when it came to medical treatments and interventions, assuming the illness was not putting the baby at any grave or long-term risk, less was more, that waiting and seeing was better than swooping in with a quick pharmaceutical fix. That was what I thought for seven long months during which he endured half-a-dozen ear infections and at least as many colds, acid reflux and RSV, and two separate cases of the Rotavirus. But at some point along the way, I simply realized that "wait and see" wasn't working. I decided that modern medicine, with all of its potential side effects and scary unknowns, was going to be my son's new best friend.
We took him to an allergist, a warm, lovely woman who hugged him and kissed him at every visit and put him on a daily, preventative regimen of Flovent. We took him to an ear, nose, and throat doctor who convinced us that myringotomy, or ear tubes, a surgical procedure though it might be, was the way to go. It seemed like an awful lot of invasive treatment for a baby that everyone agreed was "basically healthy," but it turned out to be one of the best parenting decisions we've made.
Days went by when we didn't wonder if we should be taking Roscoe to the doctor, and the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks, months. Seeing the difference between a sick-healthy baby and a healthy-healthy baby, I wondered why in the hell I had waited so long. After all, I'd never been a big fan of the wait-and-see approach when my own health or comfort was involved.
Antibiotics, I decided, are the best invention in the history of the world.
I'm the kind of person who buys ibuprofen in bottles as big as pickle jars. I think therapy and meditation and journaling and exercise are great for anxiety and depression, but I also love my Zoloft. Antibiotics, I long ago decided, after recovering from a nasty urinary tract infection, are the best invention in the history of the world. And yet, where my son was concerned, I was paralyzed. The thought of anyone, even a doctor I trusted, doing anything that could cause pain or discomfort to this perfect, helpless creature in my arms, no matter how temporary or necessary, was clouding my judgment in a way I never would have expected before Roscoe was born.
But then, what parental transformations are expected? Who can anticipate the myriad ways that being responsible for another person's life turns us into homeopaths, or train wrecks, or superheroes, or all three at once?
©2009 Kim Brooks and Babble
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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