A Visit with a Pediatrician: Twenty-one years later

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Kind of like this one, but with a baby.

Recently, I took my nephew's wife and their baby, (number three), to the pediatrician.  The little guy was to have his "first month" check up. Due to complicating circumstances, my niece (in-law) is still not able to drive or lift the baby in its baby chair. (This really isn't that hard to believe, when you have to lift one of those things...) I was so happy to help and was even more pleased to be asked.

Though to be honest, somehow, I thought we were going to a follow up appointment for the "mom". Not that it mattered, I would l have done it either way, I was just caught off guard by what happened as a result.

When I inquired where the doctor's office was, it turned out to be the same pediatric office that I had taken my own children to. (I should add here, my oldest turns thirty this week, just to give you perspective).

Upon entering the office, I was struck by the feeling of deja vu. It didn't look quit the same, but it felt the same. I was transported back. Having had of four children in five years, I had spent a great deal of time in this office. Ear infections, well baby check ups, strep throat and various other childhood illnesses.

When the baby was called, I went with, to carry all of the paraphernalia. I rounded the bend towards the examining room, there at the desk, stood the doctor that had been there at one of my darkest hours. Not my regular doctor, but the one that happen to be on call that Sunday morning in April, twenty-one years ago.

I do not know these people. but he looks so kind

He was the man, that gently, and quietly told me, my son needed to go to the Children's hospital in the city, as soon as possible. He said "let's avoid the trauma of an ambulance for the little fellow, are your other children okay?"
This conversation took place at, the unlikely time of, 7:00 am. Then the odyssey began.

Here was the doctor, standing before me, that drove down to the city, in rush hour traffic, on the following Friday night, twenty-one years ago,  to visit us, as we stayed in a small room filled with; worry, fear, monitors, eight different  tubes running into this little boy's body, and hardly any room for anything else, concrete or emotional.

It was if I was transported back to that morning.  I was interrupted in my reverie by this kind man asking, "How are you connected to this baby? (pointing to my newest grandnephew) And after I give this baby its due attention, I want to hear all about your baby. He must be grown now, right?"

This seems like a simple statement...now.   For at the time, my darling boy, was given only weeks to live by people who really knew about those kinds of thing. And no one was more surprised or please (except for me and my husband), then these very same people,  when this turned out not to be the case.

And here, today, as this doctor, gently measured and examined this new baby, I could not help but be so very thankful, that on that one day, he examined, my baby.