A milestone (of sorts)

Yesterday Frances woke up with a nice borderline cough: Bad enough that I felt wrong sending her to daycare, good enough that I felt wrong staying home with her. In the end Mommy Guilt won out and we stayed home for the day, and after trying a few local doctors to see if they were accepting patients (no luck) we went off to the walk-in clinic to see if it was a cold or something else.

Can I mention, just as an aside, how I absolutely hate taking her to new doctors? My rational mind knows better, but the Mommy Mind is always petrified that I'll end up with an over-zealous fanatic who thinks her small size is my fault and who will call the CAS. Silly but true.

However, we lucked out; the doctor we ended up with has a tiny grand-daughter (due to illness in her infancy) and didn't make a boo over her being so little--but he did diagnose an ear infection and give her some antibiotics.

An ear infection! On the one hand: poor bunny really was sick. Good thing we stayed home. On the other: This is her first ear infection and she's almost 18 months old. That's not bad, eh?

The appointment gave me another opportunity to view Frances's own unique version of stubborness in action: She just refuses. No temper tantrums (yet). She's very quiet about being stubborn. So that when the nice doctor wanted to look in her mouth and see if the infection had spread at all (it probably has, hence the cough) and he tried to get the popsicle-stick thingie in her mouth to see, she just pressed her lips together and stared at him. No screaming, no head-shaking, no tears. Just a big stare and some firm lips.

And she won. As the doc put it: "Well, I'm giving you medicine already, so why make you unhappy by forcing you to open your mouth?"

Posted by Andrea at May 31, 2005 6:54 AM under Doctors, Geneticists and Other Charlatans

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)