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: Observer wants Mumsnetters' views on whether parents over react to their child's health
(67 messages)
i took ds to a and e once because he had bashed his foot and was very upset and couldn't put weight on it etc.
i was sent away after being told, it's just a bruise and he'll be fine. i spent a week trying to get hm to walk on it and then i got a letter from the hospital asking me to take him back in., it was broken.
they'd missed it on the x rays.poor little boy-no wonder he didn't want to walk on it.
No, I don't think you did. You took her back and you listened to her. I think you did everything you could. I am always telling parents on here to get their children checked over for this very reason. Sometimes they don't listen.
And on a more serious note? Well yes I have one. My only sorrow is that I should have been more over dramatic and should have gone on my gut instinct after dd fell off a small garden swing. After a visit to A&E she had her arm put in a cast and then we were sent home. When I did make a fuss, 2 days later and another visit back to A&E, because she was in so much pain we got sent back home, then 2 weeks later, for follow up, I had to hear "to keep mummy happy will put your arm in a cast again for another 3 weeks, but there is nothing wrong" at which point they still hadn't figured out she had a dislocated elbow and was in constant pain. Thankfully the plaster technician listened to me and decided she wouldn't put it in a cast and could see how much pain dd was in. She insisted they looked at the xrays again and only then noticed it had been dislocated all that time. So 3 operations later and 10" scar and limited mobility and will never regain full rotation in her wrist. No not funny at all.
Maybe Sharon Stone is so concerned because she herself suffered a stroke so young? Give the woman a break!
I have called an ambulance for my dd- once when she had a febrile convulsion (about 11mo) and once when she started turning blue (9mo).
I think the 'over-reacting' thing is about confidence of the parent. I was much more scared when she turned blue-she had fallen off the bed, stopped breathing, and was going blue. Turns out she was just 'shocked' and held her breath- I didn't know babies did that stuff! I was dialling 999 in a blind panic, with tears running down my face, though by the time they answered, she had begun the screaming.
With the convulsion, I knew what was happening, called 999 very calmly, whilst stripping her, and telling DH to wet a flannel to cool her down etc. It was all very rational- but I had read about febrile convulsions, and other friends with DC the same age had been through the experience 1 or 2 months before. It was a very different experience, and the ambulance crew re-assured us that we'd done the right thing calling them.
I took my six year old son to the dentist as he complained of toothache. The dentist checked him, did the x-rays and said "Your son has a wriggly tooth. Just keep wriggling it, it will be out in a day or two".
On the other hand I was taking him back and forth to various doctors for two years, as he wasnt eating much, he was often sick, had temperature, complained about tummy ache, etc. Every doctor said the same thing "He is just a fuzzy eater, he probably cant localize his pain very well, must be his throat" He got so ill and lethargic, he was admitted to hospital whilst on holiday in Poland, and diagnosed with severe iron deficient aenemia. I had asked the doctors to get his iron levels checked, and told they did not do this as the needle could be so distressing. LIke hell, as if the two years of his life where he was in pain and couldnt eat was not distressing?
Putting him on a high iron diet along with multivitamins with iron helped, though he still complained of tummyache, until he eventually he had an appendectomy. The surgeon said that some children had a very long and slow build-up to appendicitis.
My problem has not been taking him uneccesarily to the doctor, but getting the doctors to believe that my son was actually ill. Trust a mothers instinct.
ds was taken to out of hours gp due to crying, he was about 2 weeks old oh and he had some strange of rash, which was just the mark of my fingers holding him sometimes his skin was blue and mottled, but that would be the cold house
Littlebella - I used to work at an out of hours GP surgery - it's not just A&E and the call logs for the day surgery were not much better.
Mind you it was always a laugh when someone would turn up after Casualty was on BBC1 on a Saturday night claiming their three year old had pre-eclampsia or leprosy!
LittleBella - sadly I have seen this happen - it's not as rare as you think. I have stood in A&E and watched a mum check in five children because one has a paper cut and the other four have a cold.
I don't think it's parasitic for people of any age who are genuinely ill to seek medical help. I think it is the way they go about it that's askew.
If it's an emergency then yes you need emergency help but I know myself if I ever need to go to the docs and I'm not acutely ill, I make the appt for three days hence and most times cancel it the day before because I'm getting better anyway.
I once took a 5 month old ds to gp as he was off-colour and hadn't been feeding properly for days. GP glanced at his gorgeous michelin man like rolls of baby fat...and said "hmmm, he's wasting away isn't he?" and winked.
I do like my gp - he has a very reassuring manner!
I don't know of any parent who demands that little Johnny's tummy ache gets dealt with before that bloke who is having a heart attack over there.
Honestly, when has that happened? It is part of that exaggerated narrative of patients who take the piss. Because a few nutters are utterly unreasonable, a whole bunch of people are being sent messages that their wish to use the medical service is unreasonable and somehow parasitic.
I just really object to it, it is extremely reactionary. And I speak as someone who (touch wood) hasn't been near a doctor for at least 3 years. I want as little as possible to do with them and will avoid them unless I think it's absolutely necessary to seek them out.
My 14 month old ds was playing with my wedding ring. Ten minutes later it was nowhere to be seen. I turned the whole room upside down before concluding that he must have swallowed it.
Took him to casualty, cue lots of grinning from receptionist and triage nurse. When the doctor saw him she said they wouldn't x-ray children that young, if they could help it. She explained that they had a new mini-metal detector, which could scan his tummy and see if the ring was inside. They scanned him over his clothes, which kept beeping, and after discarding metal belt loops and trousers (metal buttons) it continued to beep over his nappy. On closer inspection we found my ring inside his nappy - he'd dropped it down the back of his neck.
The doctor and nurses were wetting themselves. Ds turned into a right kleptomaniac after that, I kept finding hair bobbles, jigsaw pieces and all sorts in his nappy, all dropped down the back of his neck!
I think there's an education and a parental support problem in the UK. Parents tend to over react sometimes when they have not experienced an illness before or have seen something in the media because alot don't have the eduation to tell them how to notice signs of when their child has a mild illness, when to take them to the GP and when to get immediate medical help. We are handed our children, sent out of the hospital and that's it. I used to be a student paeds nurse and have seen parents bring their child into A&E because they didn't believe their GP's diagnosis. We didn't mind though, we'd rather spend time looking at a healthy child then to have a child brought in seriously ill because it's parents didn't think it was worth bringing it in or taking it to the doctors. Parents are also given conflicting advice from the media and health professionals which does make them unsure of what they are doing which does not help. The paraetamol advice reciently given to parents is a good example. It leaves parents hesitant on giving their child mediation because of the risk of their child developing asthma. In a month time there will be something else.
Parents often don't have anyone to turn to when their child is ill. Health visitors no longer offer support to parents as they are too busy and too few. The support network that a mother had twenty years ago, granny not far away, is now rare as extended families live further away from each other. I'm not surprised parents over react when we are being bombarded with reports of children dying beause of this or that illness. Knowledge is a good thing but parents need to be told of all of the facts and given the eduation and support to be able to judge whether their child needs medial care or not.
LittleBella - I bet I could outdo you on the bad tempered front, it's my birthday and I have no cake nor balloons
BTW the docs who say 'we'd rather you come in than....' are trained to say that - when you leave they roll their eyes and write PFB on your kid's notes!
I agree - women laughing at themselves is one thing, a feature about how silly all these hysterical mummies are can be a different matter. Like lots of parents I have had to fight and fight for my child's health, be that a diagnosis of an allergy that was making his life utterly miserable ('it's just a cold, go away) or his dyspraxia and other things.
LittleBella - there is a world of difference between feeling that you have a right to good care (which I agree with) and entitlement to have instant access to that care.
Your child may be screaming because his tummy hurts that minute but compared to someone who is having a heart attack and whowilldie if he doesn't get urgent treatment would you really say 'oh yes, my kid needs to go first'?
Actually it's not negligent to wait ten minutes or test whether it really is that bad by using distraction (if the promise of chocolate buttons suddenly cures the problem, I'm guessing it's not a fatal illness).
Also doctors would not call a mother lazy or negligent for not bringing their child in at the first sniffle. I have turned up at doctors and said 'DD has been unwell for a week with X and Y, we have tried self treatment, it hasn't worked' and been told 'well nine times out of ten self treatment does work but it hasn't so now we have to do something'.
Finally there is nothing to stop you learning more about first aid or healthcare, it is your responsibility as a parent to be able to the help the doctors by being able to describe what's happened at the very least and perhaps if you were a bit more confident in how to treat minor injuries and ailments you would more inclined to try watchful waiting.
I hate this bollocks about having a sense of entitlement. Yes I do feel entitled to get medical care for my child if s/he needs it.
Especially in a society which defines NOT seeking medical help for a child who needs it, as an act of child abuse which could be imprisonable if your child deteriorates rapidly because you didn't take them to the doctor on time ("lazy", "negligent")
FFS. If you don't take them to the doctor's, you don't know they don't need medical help. And every single doctor worth their salt, will always say to a mother: "I would rather you were hysterical and brought them in unnecessarily, than too diffident to bring them in until it's too late."
But hey, that doesn't fit in with the mother-bashing narrative, does it.
the threads i can link to on here with mothers shrieking at people to 'take dd to a and e NOW' OR ' ring an ambulance' for totally unnecessary ailments ...makes me seethe
What like the growth in my DD's ear which turned out to be a raisin
Or the time I rushed her to the doctors because she was really constipated and immediately as the doctor examined her she shat all over his desk (she was over the age of one at the time!)
Obviously though these were PFB moments, DS now if he sneezes we accept he may have a cold and it's not the bubonic plague.
I do think we have a sense of entitlement that says our kids should be seen immediately and that everything should be fixed/they should never suffer.
Whereas actually sometimes things hurt and you have to learn to live with it.
A 'friend' ;-);_) once rushed herdaughter to A&E because she had a bad cut that was gushing blood. She didnt know how she had done it as she was in her high chair eating and when she turned back she was covered. As friend was squeamish so didn't dare try and clear it up enough to check out the wound.
Dr was not impressed when he wiped away the TOMATO SAUCE to reveal no cut at all.
I can merrily add to this one - at 3 weeks old he cried all night so we saw the OOH GP - he was asleep by the time we got there . For the record he proceeded to cry all night every night for the following 5 months
We got an emergency GP appointment when he was a week old for his sticky eyes (which, apparently, all babies get nobody tells you these things).
DP took him to the doc again this morning because we found a lump behind his ear yesterday. It was gone by the time he got there - a lymph node apparently
I'm a vet, I should know better!
However, despite having a background in mammalian physiology and dealing with illness and infection on a daily basis, I've never had a baby before and I had no way of knowing I was over-reacting on any of the above occasions. So how is someone who has no medical knowledge whatsoever supposed to differentiate between minor and major illness? Surely better to be safe than sorry. Funny thread but treading on difficult ground.
as for the consultant takingnher kid to a and e for croup-well she is right to do so. stroking their forehead and giving them a cuddle while they are unable to breathe doesn't make you a better mummy you know?
I agree with SM. Yes it's true we can all laugh at our PFB moments, but on MN that's fine, this is for the observer which is out in the big wide world which has become increasingly hostile and sneering towards mothers.
spicemonster... I think what is being asked for are the kind of over-reactions that we all do, and we all laugh about later.
I was not, and would never, post a funny story about someone else taking their PFB to the doc because they didn't appear to feel pain.
That would be nasty and mean and un-funny
What makes it funny is that it was me who did it. I can laugh about it later precisely because she was obviously perfectly okay.
I have also taken all three children to the docs, or the hospital because I felt something was wrong and, guess what, something bloody well was wrong!
Nobody is suggesting that we make this into a "laugh at the new mums" thread. It is a "laugh at ourselves" thread. And, let's face it, if we can't laugh at ourselves then the world is a very very miserable place.
I'm not blaming this thread but I do think rubbishing mothers for over-reacting makes them think twice before seeking medical advice. Or maybe I'm just so worried about being PFB about things that I take it too far. Either way, I don't like the 'let's all laugh at the hysterical mothers' vibe. I think it's unpleasant and making women's lives even harder. I don't see the same riducule being directed at dads.
You see it was all that hahaha let's all laugh at the stupid overreacting mummy stories that led me to not want to make a big deal of my DS's temperature and stentorious breathing last winter. I didn't make a big deal up until the point when he turned blue when I finally plucked up courage to call NHS Direct. He ended up being rushed to resus because he couldn't breathe. He was 9 months old.
My sister is a consultant (not paediatrics) and rushes hers to A&E whenever they have croup. I look on bewildered, knowing that mine had far worse bouts of croup but all they got from me was a big cuddle and some forehead-stroking...
mmj, you've got the wrong end of the stick. infected eczema is just not fucking funny, and taking him to the doctors was in no way an over-reaction - this thread is about people who have over-reacted.
I took my dd to the out of hours surgery last year as she had a very high temperature and a rash on her back that didn't blanch. It was only under the bright lights at the surgery I realised the rash was freckles.
i don't think this kind of article is helpful really. let's all mock the silly mummies for doing the best they can for their children. hilarious.
was i over reacting when i took my son to the gp 3 times in one week because his face was bleeding and weeping with eczema and then he woke up with yellow pus oozing out ofhis ear?
Our friends DD ever so slightly scratched herself on the face. It went a bit red round the scratch the next day. They went to A&E 'in case it was infected'
We had a very over-dramatic reaction to our precious first born's first "illness".
She was 6 days old and she did not cry when I changed her nappy. It was the first nappy change she remained calm for and afterwards she contentedly lay in her moses basket without screaming to be picked up (another first). Within minutes I was looking up "lethargy" in my Great Ormond Street Guide to child health. The introduction to that guide refers to a mother who "felt her baby was not her usual self" but was ignored and 24 hours later watched her baby die of meningitis - the message was "trust your instincts". Before I had even finsihed the paragraph I was packing DD into her car seat and driving to A&E. DD was still looking happy so DH rang his parents to tell them how worried we were. We ignored their guffaws and reasonable points about DD not having a fever or any sign of illness.
A&E were very diplomatic. They did nto appear to judge us but did snigger when I said the problem was my 6 day old "was just not her normal self".
I positively under react. My daughter was off school ill with high temp and sore throat. Was over 3 days before it occurred to me to look in her throat. Tonsillitis.
oh, and I took dd2 to the hospital because she was crying.
In my defence, she was about three weeks old and had never cried much and we couldn't get her to stop.
By the time we got to hospital she was fast asleep and the doctor refused to wake her up to check her over as he knew she was fine so he made me wait for an hour till she woke up naturally.
Squonk! I was crying about the very same thing the other day to my mother, ds2 doesn't appear to feel pain! He feel down my concrete stairs and didn't murmer a sound!
I once took dd1 to the doctors because I was concerned that she didn't appear to feel pain.
She would fall over, then immediately jump up and carry on playing.
A very patient doctor explained to me that this was because she was in fact not hurt
By carriemumsnet on Thu 02-Oct-08 19:25:19
(from MNHQ)
It's on the back of the Sharon Stone story where allegedly she suggested botoxing her son's feet to stop them smelling - and the judge's finding that she 'overreacts to many medical issues.
The Observer want to hear from anyone who has any fun stories about your most dramatic over-reaction to your child's health and, on a more serious note, why some parents feel compelled to behave in this way; how they're treated by the GP or doctor, and what would help them put their child's health in perspective.
That's terrible bitemylip. 
I was dialling 999 in a blind panic, with tears running down my face, though by the time they answered, she had begun the screaming.
I had asked the doctors to get his iron levels checked, and told they did not do this as the needle could be so distressing. LIke hell, as if the two years of his life where he was in pain and couldnt eat was not distressing?
...and I thought this thread was going to be fun...!! 
