Doctors

How many doctors visits does a newborn baby need? Let's see...

1. As soon as we were discharged from the hospital (the baby was 3 days old), we headed to see a lactation consultant. My nipples were already in pain and I needed help to make sure the baby was latching correctly. The consultant examined my little one and suggested that we get his tongue tie fixed right away.

2. Two days later we were at the dentist office to fix the tongue tie in order to improve his latch and avoid speech problems down the road. At the time, the doctor advised that his lip tie is not severe, and so we did not touch it.

3. When the baby turned one week old, there was a required check up with a pediatrician. The baby was measured, weighted, and examined.

4. A few days later, after the umbilical cord already fell off, I noticed that baby's belly button was bleeding a little bit. I decided to check it out and we went to see a local walk in general practitioner. Everything turned out to be ok, just needed to wait a few days for the scar to heel.

5. I read online, that because babies have very little room while they are still inside the belly, they might come out slightly unaligned. This can result in a baby being fussy, and have some digestive issues. I also noticed that my little one was always turning his head to the left side, and refused to look to the right. So I decided that we needed to see a chiropractor to ensure that all bones were in correct alignment.

6. From very early on, we saw that the baby had a lot of yellow build up in his right eye. Before going to see a doctor, I called the toll free number to speak with a registered nurse about it. This is a free service that is available in Toronto where we live. The nurse said to wipe the eye with a damp cloth, and that it was normal for the babies to have this until their tear ducts develop.
   All of the above happened during the first month of baby's life. After that...

7. The baby received all his required immunizations at 1 month appointment with the pediatrician. We also opted to received additional shots at 2 and 3 month of age as per doctor's advice.

8. I was still in a lot of pain when breastfeeding, and so we visited the international breastfeeding clinic to seek further help with the latch and positioning. At that time Dr Newman recommended that we fix the tongue and lip ties together, and prescribed me domeperidone to help with milk production.

9. Another recommendation was to take the baby to a session of a cranial massage therapy to relax his jaw muscles. I didn't notice any difference after the massage, so we only went once.

As you can tell, we've been getting a lot of professional help for the little one. So many doctors for the baby who is actually in a very good health, knock on wood. Hopefully going forward we can bring this number down.