Weights, Measurements and Eczema – Really Exciting, I Know.

Warning: The following information only has the remote possibility of being interesting to the Grandparents but the pictures at the end are pretty cute.

What I expected: Well baby checkups from a doctor every month or two wherein the babies would be weighed, measured, have their reflexes checked, get vaccinations and I would get to ask questions about feeding, sleeping patterns, rashes, stuffy noses, etc.



What is the case: I am supposed to bring the baby to “Baby Clinic” once a month on a Monday between 1:30 and 3:30 PM. No appointment, just write down your name and wait. When your name is called you are led to a room full of chairs with two scales and a table with two changing pads. There are usually three Health Visitors sitting in some of the chairs talking to mothers. I bring the babies in undress them, weigh them, then argue with someone to measure their length. (Them: “That’s done at your GP’s office” Me: “No, they won’t do it, they said they used to but when you set up down here you took all their equipment and they don’t even have a way to measure the babies.”) Put the babies back into the stroller and talk with a health visitor.


How it pertains to my story: There are several health visitors at the Baby Clinic I am assigned to and only one will give you anything other than what I find when I look on the NHS website.


My story: The first week I went to the Baby Clinic a Mom I had been chatting with in the waiting room whispered to me as she left “get the blond one, she’s the only one who is helpful.” To that mother I am eternally grateful. I now systematically take my time dressing and diapering the babies so I can time it so that I get to conference with this particular health visitor. It has worked two out of the 5 months I have had the babies.


When they were a month old, I brought them in and said “Every time I bathe them they breakout all over then peel. I am only bathing them once a week and I am putting lotion on them everyday but it is still happening. I am pretty sure it is eczema because I had it and it looks like the same as what used to cover the back of my knees.”

“No, worries, just rub a little olive oil on them. They are just new babies, they will grow out of it.”

The next month I come back and again say “the babies are still broken out from head to toe. They are cutting themselves from scratching; I think we need more than olive oil.” I am reprimanded for wanting to overmedicate my children and lectured about the harmful effects of steroid creams and given a bath substitute called Aqueous cream. I am told to rub it all over them following their bath and one other time a day. I do this for two months and at each baby clinic tell a new health visitor that Ellie turns red and screams when we put it on her and show them where my daughter’s neck is bright red and weeping and they say just to keep up the Aqueous cream and she will grow out of it.

Yesterday, I went in to have the babies weighed and measured. I rejoiced when I saw that the blond lady was there. I rushed Ellie to her and showed her that now the backs of her knees, inside of her arms and neck were all bright red and weeping. I explained how I was using the Aqueous cream, doing a lukewarm bath everyday and even putting Diaper cream on the areas because the jar said it helped with Eczema. She told me I should talk to my GP and get an oil based lotion instead of the Aqueous cream. I got really excited that I was being offered something other than olive oil. After a few more minutes of talking about it she asked if Ellie ever turned red when I put the Aqueous cream on her. I said “YES! I keep saying she screams when I put it on her!”


She told me that 5% of children have a reaction to the lanolin in it. She wrote down another bath substitute and an oil based cream. I went directly upstairs to my GP because I was so frustrated that I had been putting it on her for 2 months. When I got upstairs they told me that my doctor would call me tomorrow. I asked if there was no one on call that could write a prescription for something that had already been diagnosed and which the health visitor had told me my daughter was having a reaction to the former prescription. She said no, I needed to wait until my doctor called me tomorrow. I... wait for it... told her I didn’t have a phone. I had decided my daughter was not waiting another day.  (I almost feel bad for the lie but I felt worse that Ellie had been in pain for two months and wasn't getting the treatment she needed.) She told me to sit but I would have to wait. I told her that was fine. It was time for the babies nap anyway. I sat for an hour and a half. I finally got in to see the on call doctor and she immediately started writing prescriptions for what her 8 month old son used.


What made me furious: I asked the doctor if she had tried the Aqueous cream on her son. She responded without thinking that she didn’t because it doesn’t really do any good. (Cut to me smiling on the outside but inside going: AHHHHHHHHHH!) I asked why it was prescribed for my babies and that put her back on her NHS good behavior side and she explained that they tried to prescribe the least invasive (read cheapest) form of treatment first. The health visitor had also bothered to mention that they probably prescribed Aqueous cream because it was cheap.

Unless you are the grandmother of my children and you haven't already, this is really where you want to skip to the pictures.

The Stats:

Tate

Weight – 16 pounds 13 ounces (50th percentile)

Length – 2 feet 2 inches (50th percentile)

Head Circumference – 50th percentile

Just call him Marry Poppins because he is practically perfectly proportioned in every way.  Tate does have a long torso so we are already putting him in 6 to 9 month shirts.  The 3 to 6 month shirts show his belly.


Ellie

Weight – 18 pounds 13 ounces (a bit under 91st percentile)

Height – 2 feet 2.6 inches (a bit under 91st percentile)

Head Circumference – 50th percentile (I think it still has a little rounding left to do from the suction cup.)


In conclusion: The following pictures are currently the only way I can get them to nap for longer than consistently and exactly 38 minutes. Lay them like this and they sleep for 3 hours. I can’t go anywhere because they’re on my bed but I am not complaining.