"Experience with the paediatrician"

I recently had my first baby at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital, where after being in labour for about 16 hours the decision was made that our baby would be delivered by forceps!

During our time there, the midwives I had were all lovely, extremely helpful, supportive and nothing seemed to much to ask! Once our baby had arrived safely, we were put into Summerfield ward, where once again the care we received by everyone was everything we could have asked for!

The only downside to this was when our baby went for his head to toe check the day after he was born with the paediatrician.

Once in the room, we were told that there was 3 things initially wrong with our child within about 2 minutes!

The paediatrician first said that he had a heart murmur and we were told to be quiet so they could listen again, and then they thought it wasn’t a heart murmur but an infection so he would need to have blood taken and potentially given antibiotics but then they said for us to come back once he had stopped crying so they could check him again. Once this doctor came back had checked on him later on in the day, we found out there was nothing wrong with his heart.

The next thing this paediatrician told us was that he had jaundice but again once they did the test for that and he never.

The final thing was when they looked at his eyes for the red eye reflex. They could find this in one eye but not the other and kept repeating to us that this was very serious and that they had worked with lots of children and has never seen this before and we would have to get referred to the eye clinic, urgently. As you can imagine as first time parents we were completely shocked, overwhelmed and crying!

We were then just left to push our baby back to our bedside in his cot, full of worry.

We went over to the eye clinic hours later to see if they could see what the paediatrician was referring too. It was quite obvious that the consultant we got at the eye clinic didn’t have experience working with children, especially a 1 day old baby, but he tried his best and we were told there not to worry and they would send us an outpatient appointment with the lead eye specialist at the children’s hospital.

When we got back onto Summerfield, the paediatricians had swapped shifts and the paediatrician that was now on wanted to look at his eye as they didn’t understand the notes that had been left, so once again we went into the room for this doctor to try and find this red eye reflex. They then said they could see it and didn’t have a clue what the other paediatrician was on about.

At our outpatient appointment at RACH where we met with Mr Reddy, who dealt with our one week old baby very professionally. Mr Reddy didn’t even have to touch his eye to look in it, unlike the paediatrician who was constantly prodding, poking and trying to open it, we found out there was absolutely nothing wrong with his eye.

Although we appreciate the paediatrician was only doing their job and has to double check any potential issues with any baby, we feel that the way the information was passed over to us was completely unprofessional and insensitive and while this is a time when you are supposed to be enjoying the birth of your special little baby, we are filled with worry, stress and a severe lack of information. We just hope that other parents do not have to go through this experience with the same paediatrician.