1.They perform unnecessary procedures to cover their asses from possible lawsuits if they fail to discover hidden problems. More procedures mean more money for them as well, and higher bills for you.
2.You can’t just nurse your baby as you wish. They rather starve your baby for slight chance that they may need to perform some procedures that prefer a empty stomach.
3.Different doctors and nurses do the same exams over and over and disturb your baby over and over. And they don’t trust their physical exams, they still prefer electronic exams.
4.They perform unnecessary routines and cause your baby to suffer.
5. Once you get in there, you can not just leave with your baby as you wish. It’s sort of like you submit yourself to the prison.
6.An injured or sick baby needs good rest, and hospital is the worst place for it.

I only learned these lessons after my own rushing my injured baby to emergency room last Saturday. On that dramatic morning, Michael was holding Maiya against his shoulder walking down the stairs, and he unexpectedly stepped on our cat lying on one of the steps, he was so shocked that he dropped our baby down the stairs. I was horrified to see what happened in front of my eyes. I ran and took her into my arms. She was crying with her eyelids squeezing shut and her mouth open and her jaws misaligned. Then when I saw one spot of her head dented, we flew to the emergency room at Kaiser.

It was a short drive, but still Michael ran a few red lights. By the time we got there, Maiya looked better already, and her jaws were fine. They physically examined her, besides a big swollen area on her head, she looked fine. They did a CAT scan of her head. The doctor said that there were two fractures on her skull but bones were not shifted and no evidence of dangerous excessive bleeding, and that it’s good news in general but there is small chance that more bleeding may occur later so he arranged Maiya to be transferred by ambulance to the Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital-because Kaiser did not have space- to be observed over night. I was worried about ambulance charge so I asked him if we could take her there instead, he said yes and “but”. Another voice in my head teased myself that ambulance fee is insignificant compared to hospitalization fees, so I didn’t insist. I was concerned if there would be more tests to be done there, the doctor assured me that they just need to observe her.

I was worried and weeping. Katrina looked at me and told me that Maiya is ok. I wish I had listened to her, my 4-year-old daughter, and refused to go to ICU. In the silence of waiting, I just wondered myself why Michael dropped Maiya like that? The same situation happened to me before, I was holding Maiya walking down the stairs and stepping on the cat, but I held her tighter instead, I did not drop her to use both hands to regain my balance. Why is such a difference between mother and father? I talked to him about it later after things had settled down, he said that in that split second he actually did not remember he got the baby in his arms until he saw her hitting the stairs. This memory thing, like one story on the news last year, a father forgot his baby in the car and found his baby dead after he got off from work.
The doctor said that they need to give Maiya IV. I said that’s going to hurt. He said no, it won’t. A nurse came to do it, Maiya started to scream. She bruised her one arm, then she tried her other arm. I walked away. I couldn’t bear to watch this. It was going on and on. I came back. Another nurse was trying. It was hard to find a tiny vein underneath the baby fat tissue. She tried tapping the back of her palm. I walked away again. It seemed like a good 30 minutes it took when it’s done finally. I had to calm down the crying baby again on my shoulder.

Then the ambulance came with another doctor. They did a couple X-rays. Then they buckled her up in the bed to be transferred. She looked at me crying, upset about being away from my shoulder.

It was heavy traffic on the road. We got there. They examined her again. She was crying about it. Another doctor came to examine her. She was all irritated and crying. So the doctor said that she needs to have a CAT scan of her belly to make sure her internal organs were not hurt by the fall since the baby was crying at her touch. We said that her belly was fine, and she was just irritated by the new place and more people doing something to her. Of course the doctor did not go for that. Maiya got another CAT scan. The nurse gave her some medicine to make her sleepy through IV in order to do the scan. The result of the CAT scan was fine.

It was a long day, plenty of waiting around. I asked one doctor if I could nurse my baby. She said no. Another doctor who demanded the abdominal CAT scan came in the room, I asked her the same question. She said yes. The nurse came in and saw me nursing. He was very surprised but he went to verify with that doctor.

Finally they sent us to ICU. Maiya got a crib bed in the room with four other kids. It was quite noisy for quite a while.

The next day morning, a nurse came in the room to draw blood from all the patients in the room. Maiya screamed again. She poked a needle underneath her skin and moved around a bit to find a vein. At least she was much better at doing this. It only took her a few minutes. Maiya was still crying quite a while afterwards.

Then Michael came. Maiya started to smile at people again. Nothing much was going on. The trauma surgeon came and told us that Maiya didn’t need anything from their department and her files had been transferred to the neo surgeon. Basically we just need to wait for the neo surgeon to talk to us and give us blessing and we can leave. We were waiting. Michael asked our nurse, she said that the neo surgeon usually came to work at 11 am on Sundays. Finally he came to talk to every body in the room. He said that he had not looked at the scans yet but he would go to take a look and came right back to tell us. So he came back and said that the bones will heal by itself and we can go home anytime. It took another two, three hours before they let us leave.

We came home. I was puzzled what exactly we stayed in Intensive Care Unit for? What all these extra scan and x-rays and tests for? It seems that all it needs at the most is a CAT scan of the skull and a neo surgeon to look at it. Did we stay over night in another hospital simply because there was no neo surgeon on duty then? Why did she need IV?

I took The Baby Book from the bookshelf, and read the section on head injuries:

“The great majority of falls involve injuries to the scalp only, which bleeds profusely if cut or forms a large swelling from broken blood vessels beneath the skin. They go down quickly with ice packs and pressure…..
If baby is alert and conscious, ….apply ice packs on the cut or bump for twenty minutes, and begin a period of observation before you call your doctor….
After a period of observation, depending on your baby’s condition, you may or may not want to call the doctor. Besides any when-to-call-the-doctor list, there is an overriding inner voice treasured by mothers. I have learned to trust this monitoring system as much as the most sophisticated electronics.” by William Sears, M.D., and Martha Sears, R.N.

I wish I had read this first before we flew to emergency room. Maiya didn’t have any signs of brain injury mentioned in the book, such as increasing paleness, disorientation, unusual breathing while sleeping, crossed eyes, persistent vomiting, convulsions. If we had stayed home just a little longer, Maiya looked much better already, and I would not be so alarmed. Her recovery is amazing. The first day she cried a lot, mostly because of all the things the doctors and nurses did to her. The second day she looked pretty good. She didn’t seem to be in pain a lot. They only gave her Tylenol a couple of times. Really what she needed was just her Mommy.

It hurts a mother’s heart to see her baby suffer from examinations and tests and needle poking, and well again when the bills come. It’s kind of strange here in the states, a lot of people don’t have medical insurance, for people who do have through their employer the benefits are shrinking each year. As if this is not bad enough, medical staff in hospitals do unnecessary procedures and cost patients even more money.

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