Anne TootillTo Be or Not to Be a Mother -Part Three
January 10th 2007 17:23
I took Josh and Alex to the pediatrician for their check-ups. Alex was only 2 months old. He had been my old pediatrician from the time I was 8 years old until I was 22. I know, I know 22 sounds too old for a baby doctor but as it turns out a lot of the kids I grew up with went to their baby doctors right through college.
Anyway, this doctor was great at diagnosing illnesses. He’d even saved my life - when I was away at a 6 week college program between junior and senior year of high school - after the nurse at the college (Cornell) administered way, way too much of my allergy serum in one shot. Without getting into all the boring details, let’s just say he went above and beyond the call duty a long, long after office hours to save the day. And he’d diagnosed a serious illness in my sister when others had failed, etc. etc., etc. As far as I was concerned he wasn’t a good doctor, he was a great doctor and I felt safe putting my children’s health in his hands.
The thing is that during Alex’s check-up he did something that made me feel very, very uneasy. He put his finger between her Labia and then ran it across each side pausing to hold up his finger and say, “You need to clean her better.”
I cleaned my children just fine. I knew that. And it wasn’t as if I was insulted. It was that I got the strangest most uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
After I left the doctor’s office I started thinking about all the times this doctor had put his arm around me when I was growing up. How many times he’d commented on the size of my chest (32D by the time I was 15) and my nice figure. How many times he’d checked me for a yeast infection, even though I couldn’t recall having complained about having one. How after Josh was born he asked me to bare my breasts so he could see if I was breast feeding Josh correctly – in his defense Josh wasn’t sucking properly and I was worried since he hadn’t been urinating a lot - but as the doctor watched it did kind of feel weird and very, very uncomfortable.
Bottom line, the more I thought about it the more uncomfortable I became. Then again he was a great doctor. That was fact. This other thing in my head was just a feeling. There were no facts to support what I was feeling. And he’d been so good to me and my family. I felt awful feeling this way about him. But I did. It took me a while, but after that incident with Alex I could no longer look at him the same. In the end I changed pediatricians.
P.S. some years later he was sued by a large group of women my age and younger for having been sexually inappropriate with them when he had been their pediatrician (the same time he had been mine). I followed the story in the newspapers until they revoked his license. Everything those women had said had rang true to me. I stopped reading after that. I don’t know if he went to jail my daughter was safe. At least this time it paid to listen to woman’s in tuition.
Anyway, this doctor was great at diagnosing illnesses. He’d even saved my life - when I was away at a 6 week college program between junior and senior year of high school - after the nurse at the college (Cornell) administered way, way too much of my allergy serum in one shot. Without getting into all the boring details, let’s just say he went above and beyond the call duty a long, long after office hours to save the day. And he’d diagnosed a serious illness in my sister when others had failed, etc. etc., etc. As far as I was concerned he wasn’t a good doctor, he was a great doctor and I felt safe putting my children’s health in his hands.
The thing is that during Alex’s check-up he did something that made me feel very, very uneasy. He put his finger between her Labia and then ran it across each side pausing to hold up his finger and say, “You need to clean her better.”
I cleaned my children just fine. I knew that. And it wasn’t as if I was insulted. It was that I got the strangest most uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
After I left the doctor’s office I started thinking about all the times this doctor had put his arm around me when I was growing up. How many times he’d commented on the size of my chest (32D by the time I was 15) and my nice figure. How many times he’d checked me for a yeast infection, even though I couldn’t recall having complained about having one. How after Josh was born he asked me to bare my breasts so he could see if I was breast feeding Josh correctly – in his defense Josh wasn’t sucking properly and I was worried since he hadn’t been urinating a lot - but as the doctor watched it did kind of feel weird and very, very uncomfortable.
Bottom line, the more I thought about it the more uncomfortable I became. Then again he was a great doctor. That was fact. This other thing in my head was just a feeling. There were no facts to support what I was feeling. And he’d been so good to me and my family. I felt awful feeling this way about him. But I did. It took me a while, but after that incident with Alex I could no longer look at him the same. In the end I changed pediatricians.
P.S. some years later he was sued by a large group of women my age and younger for having been sexually inappropriate with them when he had been their pediatrician (the same time he had been mine). I followed the story in the newspapers until they revoked his license. Everything those women had said had rang true to me. I stopped reading after that. I don’t know if he went to jail my daughter was safe. At least this time it paid to listen to woman’s in tuition.
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