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March 23, 2007
Medical Moments
The Dutch system of post-birth care is excellent. I think the equivalent in the US is the “well baby clinic”: you take your baby in periodically for checkups, measurements, and inoculations. Here the process starts in your home when a sort of extension service of the clinic sends people to your house for the first hearing and blood tests.
What I like about these visits is seeing other parents with equivalently young babies in the same situation as yourself, and hearing the noises and seeing the things their babies do. It can be very isolating being a new parent, and seeing other parents reacting just as you do to babies that cue them in just the same way as yours is in some way comforting. What I don’t like about these visits is that not every baby who comes in to the clinic is actually “well,” so one can’t help but wondering what your baby will bring home. To date, nothing, but I worry anyway.
Posted by talia at March 23, 2007 6:52 AM