Trauma at the Hospital

I don’t like going to hospitals. 

To me, you go the hospital only when you’re sick and because I don’t like getting sick, I don’t like going to hospitals.  My last visit to the hospital was the ER trip for my daughter that I wrote about in a previous entry.  It did little to temper my distaste for hospitals.

It is with this frame of reference that you can understand my attitude when I had to bring my daughter in for her last well-baby check-up the other day.  My daughter’s attitude toward hospitals is about the same as mine.  She just takes one look at the examining table and she “knows what’s up.”  Especially since her doctor’s visits are followed by visits to the vaccination clinic.  Yup. I was in for a great time.  Little did I know…

So this particular check-up was going pretty smoothly until the provider that was seeing us started asking me questions about my daughter’s development.  She was giving me advice about her diet, what her vocabulary should be like, and other cognitive developments that I should expect.  She then I asked me if I was potty training her to which I emphatically said, “No.”  So at this point the provider starts telling me that I should think about getting a little potty for her, gives a few tips here and there, and mentions the fact that the way kids learn about “going potty” is just by watching. 

Oh boy. I know where this is going.

And then the magical words come, “You know, you should start letting her come to the bathroom with you.  And, well…since she’s a girl, you should probably start sitting down when you go to the bathroom.”

I don’t like going to the hospital at all.