Weekly Dish Blog - The Dreaded Doctor Visit

Just for the record this is about taking your kids to the pediatrician’s office, not your yearly visit to the OB. Yes, I did hear some of you breathe a sigh of relief while others just remembered it was almost that time of year. You are welcome for that friendly reminder. Anyway back to the topic at hand. When you become a parent you spend a lot of time taking your kids to the doctor. New babies go all the time when they are well, much less if they get sick. My second pediatrician told me that when you have two kids you spend more time at the pediatrician’s office than with the first kid and by the time you have three kids you should just live in the parking lot. That is scary because I already feel that I am there every other week and I only have two kids! Just another reason to stop at two.

I digress. So when you make an appointment let’s say for 8:30 in the morning. You’re thinking hey, there shouldn’t be a long wait since they just opened right? Well some day I am going to ask the pediatrician why in the world a visit for them to recheck my son’s ear has to end up taking an hour and a half. I mean what gives? Do you know how long an hour and a half is in kid time? That is enough time for a kid to touch everything in the germ infested office, play with my phone, eat a snack, read a book and drive me insane. Why make an appointment at all? What is the point of getting there on time if I am just going to end up sitting there forever?

Don’t get me wrong my doctor’s office is good about getting us out of the waiting room and taken back to the little exam room, but before you get excited, know that once that nurse closes the door no medical people are going to come back for a very long time. And so begins a tiring wait, the kind that ends with cranky kids and an even crankier mom. You hear what I’m saying fellow moms? Those exam room walls with their smiley faces and safari animals can start to close in on you after an hour.

I’m making it sound like my kids are the worst, but really they’re not. They are good kids, but even they get antsy in a small square. You would think that a pediatrician would understand that kids have zero patience. Another thing that is perplexing is that my kid’s doctor visits have a longer waiting time than my doctor visits. Someone please tell me why? And then buy me an iPad so I can use an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to subdue my kids for at least half an hour of the dreaded wait. Only another decade and a half of pediatrician visits to endure. Good times.

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