When I tell Norwegian hospital staff that it is considered normal in the US
for a baby to need to see a doctor because of 6 or 7 episodes of illness in
the first year of life, there is a collective, audible gasp in the
auditorium.  Every time.
It isn't the norm here, at all.
That said, I must relate that both my children were plagued by recurrent
otitis media episodes, both starting in the first year of life, one while
exclusively breastfed, and he was so young it took seeing pus coming out of
his ear for me to figure out what it was.  Breastfeeding, even exclusive
breastfeeding, is not a guarantee of freedom from all illness.  My daughter
got juvenile rheumatoid arthritis over a year and a half before she was
weaned.  Thanks to breastfeeding she lost no weight during 10 days of Big
Gun intravenous antibiotic treatment for what the doctor, and we, thought
was sepsis when the disease made its debut.
And when I got dysentery a year later, probably from her while she was in
day care, she was unaffected.  She didn't have any signs or symptoms of
animal dander or pollen allergy until after she was weaned.
So, I figure I would have spent even more time in waiting rooms at
inconvenient hours if it hadn't been for breastfeeding, but in our family,
illness was certainly the norm.
Rachel Myr
happy that those times are now only a vague memory
Norway

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