I'm a bit pathetic when it comes to sticking up for myself, speaking my own opinion etc, etc. Another word for it is that I'm not assertive enough.
Today I got in touch with my well child nurse and let her know that we wouldn't be returning. I politely asked her to remove us from her books and that we were doing fine. If we have any concerns we would seek advice from our family doctor.
This is something I've been putting off for a while. I've been too nervous to do it. I've been worried about it. Enough is enough and I finally worked up the courage and made the call.
It feels good. I'm pleased that I've made this decision and won't be going back. My last appointment was a couple of months ago and I left there feeling like I was doing it all wrong. I left there with doubts about my approach to raising my daughter.
You know what. I'm a good Mum. My daughter is a very happy girl. She's thriving in her environment and she's healthy, loved and she's our number one priority. I have no doubt that my parenting skills are exactly what she needs. Seeing how she's developed in the last 11 months confirms that for me.
I met up with some other mums last week. One Mum in particular has been having a bit of a rough time with the same well child nurse. She's putting doubts into this mums head making her second guess what she's doing and how her parenting skills are going. On top of that, the nurse is also causing stress by telling this Mum that her baby isn't growing "as fast as she should be compared with the growth chart". The nurse made this Mum go to a specialist to get her daughter checked out. You know what, she's fine. The specialist has no concerns. All that this well child nurse did by being so strict and following everything she does by the book is causing stress and anxiety in new mums. It's wrong.
I told the Mum who is having a rough time with it that she doesn't have to go back. It's not compulsory. For some reason I thought that we had to go to these appointments. It wasn't until I wrote an article on my blog after my last bad appointment that I had it pointed out to me that it's not something that we have to do.
I hope she takes the advice and doesn't return either. I think being a parent is hard enough. We don't need the professionals who are supposed to help us causing us more concerns.
We both have beautiful girls who are growing and developing differently. Her wee girl can do things that my girl can't yet do and vice versa. You know what? Her mum and I are quite different too. No one has said that we need to get checked out because we are different. She's really good at dancing, I'm really good at baking. I can't dance to save myself. She couldn't bake a cake if her life depended on it.
Why do they try to put all babies into a box and expect that they'll all do the same things at the same time? They're not clones. They have different skills and have been exposed to different things in their short lives. Of course they're going to develop at different times.
It would be nice to think that the well child nurse will learn to think out of the box. If a child isn't saying words when her book said that they should be, maybe she doesn't need to stress the Mum out about it. Maybe it will happen soon, maybe not. I'm sure that the majority of children eventually all learn to crawl, walk, run, eat, speak. They don't need a chart to follow. It will happen when they're ready.
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