Baby at 19 weeks!
Traveling to a foreign country is one thing, moving to one is another. Going to the doctor in one is a totally different thing. In the last 10 days we have visited 3 doctors with one more visit coming up.
While in Singapore last week I scheduled an OB appointment for myself. With all of our travel in the states I only had one appointment with my OB at 9 weeks. So I was anxious to get a check up on baby at 19 weeks. She did an ultrasound and everything looks good and healthy! The major difference I noticed between the doctor in Singapore and my OB in the States was the lack of questions she asked and the lack of tests she did. As this isn’t my first baby, neither of these things concerned me.
Next week I will be going to a hospital here in Taiwan for the big 21 week ultrasound and scan. This is the appointment where many parents find out the gender of their baby. We will be waiting for that news until baby’s birth date instead. I had help from a member at the church here to schedule the appointment with one of the doctors who can speak enough English. I’m so thankful for the people God has surrounded us with to help us along the way. I don’t know what we would do without them.
While in Singapore we also took Eleanor to a walk-in pediatric clinic for her 2 year check-up and vaccines. The walk-in clinic posted that they were open from 9am-11am on Mondays. So we arrived at 9:15am to check-in. They took Eleanor’s height and weight and instructed us to have seat. There seemed to be a lot of kids there waiting to be seen, and as we waited we noticed that no children were being called in to see the doctor. Finally at 10am a man in a white coat breezed through the door. The nurses acknowledged him with a “Hello Doctor!” as he headed into a patient room. Apparently even though the clinic hours were from 9am-11am, the doctor only worked from 10-11am.
I had to go up to my OB appointment and couldn’t wait with Eleanor any longer so Matt took over from there. He said that she was seen shortly after I left and the appointment was fairly quick. He also noticed that the doctor didn’t ask too many questions and he didn’t even take her vitals. He did ask, “Does she beat up on her sister?” and “Can she climb up a ladder and then go down the slide?” A big YES to both of those! But questions our previous pediatrician never asked about Laurel.
Today I took Laurel to the pediatrician at a local hospital for a fever. I don’t normally take my kids in for a fever but as we walked through the “Quarantine” area of the airport yesterday they flagged Laurel for having a fever and require you to see a doctor within 24 hours. Luckily, she was diagnosed with the common cold. And the appointment cost a whopping $10 US dollars and took only 30 minutes.