Hi all,
I´d like your experience on this one...
Sometimes (fortunately, very infrequently) a mother will come to the clinic
with breastfeeding problems, and as I look at the baby I´ll immediately
think "There´s something I don´t like about this baby". It won´t be
anything spectacular, just baby´s skin color a bit off (not jaundice, just
something about the tone), something about his body posture, something
about the shape of his face or head, something about his features... As if,
*if* these signs were more important, he would have a syndrome of some
kind. But they are only small things that come to my attention simply
because I see so many "normal" babies.
Obviously this baby has been seen by at least one pediatrician at hospital
discharge, more times if the baby is older than a week.
My dilemma here is, do I tell the mother anything? If yes, what? and how?
I´ve faced this situation a few times. The first time, I told the mother
gently about my impressions. She of course was worried and went to the ped,
who agreed with me (but hadn´t done anything before), and the baby got all
sorts of tests (genetic, bloodwork, gut...) for a period of several months,
and nothing came of it. So the poor child suffered tons of things and the
parents months of anguish for nothing...
Second baby I told the parents nothing but I had them come in frequently to
check weight and latch so I could keep an aye on him. Turns out he had a
rare malabsortion syndrome which was diagnosed a month later. Baby had FTT
despite mother´s great milk supply and his good sucking skills. So no harm
came of my not telling the parents about those little tiny signs, but maybe
if I had he would have been diagnosed sooner or parents would have been
ready.
Neither option, the telling and the not telling, felt right to me!
So how do you handle these situations? How do you say to the parents "look,
there is something about your baby that seems to be off, but its just my
impression" ?
Thnks,
Kika
--
Dra. Carmela Baeza
Médico de Familia
Consultora Certificada en Lactancia Materna IBCLC
www.centroraices.com
http://www.facebook.com/Consulta.Lactancia.Raices
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Centro-de-Atenci%C3%B3n-a-la-Familia-Ra%C3%ADces/274415189309122>
Autora de "Amar con los Brazos Abiertos"
http://www.amazon.es/Amar-con-los-brazos-abiertos/dp/8426904688/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420813499&sr=1-1&keywords=amar+con+los+brazos+abiertos
<http://www.ediciones-encuentro.es/libro/amar-con-los-brazos-abiertos.html>
Comprometida con el Derecho a Vivir
http://derechoavivir.org
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