Where is the line - munchausen's v.s. doing the right thing

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I often struggle with my partner on the question of when to perform a medical intervention on a child and when you should rely on the natural mechanisms of the body to do what it is supposed to do in a natural way.

My partner is constantly taking the children to hospital / doctor to try and get them to find problems with the children and often comes back with prescriptions / asthma pumps / all sorts of things.

I know our children aren't sick and I know my partner suffers from BPD and I know Munchausen's can sometimes be a symptom of this.

Am I worrying about nothing and should I just allow it / am I wrong for thinking the body is capable of balancing itself and we should only intervene if clearly some sort of emergency.

Has anyone else had this with their partner and what can be done about it if anything? My worry is that all the poking and dosing and fiddling may end up doing more long term harm than any actual good.

How old is the child?

My husband and I often have different views about whether it's necessary to contact the Dr (both ways).

With young children it's often difficult to tell whether it's just a standard bug, or whether it's something genuinely concerning and needs to be checked.

You sound very blasé about health and medicine, you should be taking children to the doctor LONG before it becomes and emergency! I don't see how he would have got multiple prescriptions and an asthma pump if there is nothing wrong with them.

I am concerned that you are dismissing your partner and doctors when they say your children are unwell, but you are very quick to diagnose mental health and personality disorders in their dad!

These are good points. Very few people are expert enough to diagnose psychological conditions such as Munchausen's so I think we should just imagine by this I mean to say they have the appearance of somebody finding a lot of reasons to go to hospital / GP / ring 111 / pharmacist. That may not be as severe as properly diagnosed Munchausen's. My uneducated understanding of the condition is that it's like hypochondria on behalf of somebody else.

I would say on the question of whether or not they are going to the hospital too quickly or if they are inventing reasons to go to the hospital I would say it is not quite one or the other. Just a great eagerness to jump in the car and spend hours waiting at hospital to be told there is nothing wrong and to go home.

It's an issue of seeing medical emergencies and fearing that these perceived medical emergencies could develop into a more serious condition if left unchecked. Making personal decisions to administer vitamin tablets despite the children eating fresh home cooked food with vegetables every day (not from packets, whole ingredients freshly prepared). Paying no attention to the mainstream advice not to take antibiotics frivolously. It does seem like a bit of an anxiety thing which is also a BPD thing. When confronted for an explanation it turns into shouting and saying stupid things like you're not a doctor, what would you know (as in the case above with the grandmother mentioned above).

And what makes it seem like a problem is that divisionary tactics or logistical difficulties make no difference. i.e. if it is the weekend or late at night and only skeleton services are available the suggestion that we leave it until a more suitable time seems to make the issue even more urgent.

What would be really helpful I think is if there were up front charges to pay to access services like they have in a lot of countries. i.e. you can't keep going to the GP all the time because you'd rack up a huge bill. So only go when it's clearly necessary. £45 pay on the door would really help.

It's our two children who are in primary school. When the visit turns out to be another in a long list of hoaxes where they all come home, no problem found despite that being my opinion before everybody has had to clear the decks to deal with the 'emergency', like grandparents having to babysit or days at work having to be cancelled... It sometimes feels like I have the issue until they come home with just a reassurance from the doctor that there's nothing to worry about... and then I don't feel any better about it because we've had to go through the whole process of trying to convince each other that one is right and the other is wrong so that is weighing on my mind.

Just a great eagerness to jump in the car and spend hours waiting at hospital to be told there is nothing wrong and to go home.

This is a long way from what MBP (or FII as it’s now known) is.

If it’s health anxiety call it that.

Maybe some therapy is needed. Add in some couple therapy to try to get onto a page that’s at least in the same book. It’s not unusual for someone to be fearful of health issues and act on it quickly. It’s not unusual to take a wait and see approach. Sounds like you’re both coming from very different positions and maybe there’s a compromise to be found.

They have had therapy on a few occasions recently and it's not limited to this issue of the obsession with hospitals and doctor visits. There are other symptoms associated with borderline personality such as impulsive spending, high levels of aggression with me and the children followed by swings to the opposite direction.