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Nothing shook my faith in the medical system more than having kids. Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it’s always been. Every generation la

Nothing shook my faith in the medical system more than having kids. Holy cow is modern medicine still as smugly wrong as it’s always been. Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time. And as a result you get unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
My sister wouldn't sleep. The doctor constantly gave the "sigh, you're an idiot, you just do X and Y and they sleep" talk to my mother because nothing came up on their screening, even though my mother almost wanted to scream that something was clearly wrong and abnormal. Turns out, different doctor, serious vitamin deficiency. And medical incompetence by staff, not doctors, is also awful. My brother hated reading. He got glasses, still hated reading, my mother wondered why he could be so disobedient in that regard. They said, well, the prescription is right, he can clearly see fine. Turns out two years later that the lenses were installed on opposite sides. Right lens on left eye, left lens on right eye. A simple mistake, but the consequences...
- darkclouds 3y ago
  [dead]
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  I do find it bizarre they don't verify you can see with your actual glasses.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    How would one have tested it instead?
    - analog31 3y ago
      They can verify the prescription. Also in principle they could use the same machine that finds the prescription, to verify that your net correction is zero with your glasses on. I once proved that my wife got the wrong prescription by just holding her old and new glasses up at arms length and seeing that things looked way different through them. The glasses place agreed.
    - maximus-decimus 3y ago
      Ask you to read letters again... with your actual new glasses on so you can verify how good you can see. When you get a car engine rebuilt, do they just diagnose, replace parts and then never start the engine themselves to verify it actually works?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  It’s especially a problem with women and minorities. Doctors just don’t believe them. I’m neither of those and I had to convince my doctor that I had Lyme disease. I had the bullseye right where the tick had bit me. It was clearly Lyme disease. He assumed it couldn’t be because it took 8 weeks for the bullseye to show up (it’s usually a matter of days in America). He did not know that European Lyme disease takes much longer for the bullseye to appear. He at least had the tact to call me later and apologize after he did more research
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
froggertoaster 3y ago
After 5 kids in 10 years, you come to realize that the standards aren't agreed upon, and best practices/recommendations change YEAR TO YEAR without fail. Breastfeeding is one of the worst things hoisted upon mothers who are told "you must try no matter what" - seemingly ignoring the mental and physical health of the mother and the father all the while.
- autoexec 3y ago
  There are a lot of really good benefits to breastfeeding but it's not going to work for everybody or in every situation. I wouldn't fault a doctor for recommending it, but they shouldn't make someone feel bad if it isn't working out. I want recommendations and best practices to change as our understanding of things improve though. The alternative would mean that either no more research is being done, or doctors are just ignoring anything they didn't learn while in school.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    Our doctor was fine with it. The nurse called formula poison.
    - froggertoaster 3y ago
      > The nurse called formula poison. An absolutely gross and ridiculous position.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  My partner is a GP who has been doing early childhood screening. One thing she learnt after doing a special training is that advice on proper breastfeeding is very difficult to find. She found that with many mothers that had problems, some small adjustments could often make a huge difference (often causing a kind of hallelujah moment for the mothers). The issue is much of the advice given at the hospital is wrong or insufficient. The training the she did is the possums program from Australia, if somebody wants to look it up I think some resources are available for free.
mberning 3y ago
Same experience. The medical system is a reflection of pop parenting culture or vice versa. Everyone was so gung ho on breastfeeding, but when the milk didn’t come in and our son wasn’t interested in a dry breast the only advice given was “keep trying”. Then the shock and surprise when baby is losing weight. We had to demand formula, which was given grudgingly, and left the hospital a day later. If we have another we will do breast plus formula from the get go.
- jt2190 3y ago
  > We had to demand formula I don’t understand. You can’t just go to the store and buy infant formula?
  - msteffen 3y ago
    In the US (not sure about other countries), new parents often stay at the hospital where the baby was delivered for a few days after the birth. During this time, the hospital often provides them all their food and childcare supplies: diapers, swaddles, diaper cream, wipes, etc. To get formula, you have to ask the hospital for it, but if your nurse doesn’t want to give it to you because they think you should try harder at breastfeeding, you get stuck. You could sneak out and buy some, but you’re pretty exhausted, and your partner is still stuck with a screaming, hungry baby until you’re back. (I realize after writing this out that being at the mercy of your hospital sounds draconian, but it can be really really great if you have a good nurse or midwife. They teach you how to bathe and swaddle the baby, how to nurse, how to rock them to sleep, etc. All skills you’ll need once you leave)
    - Huggernaut 3y ago
      In the Netherlands, for the 8 days after you give birth, someone comes to your house for some number of hours per day (in our case 8) to teach you these things, maybe do some tidying and cooking but most importantly, take the baby so you can sleep! This is called kraamzorg. It also has some similar pitfalls, as they are not necessarily specialists and it's still hard to disagree or do something else even if in your own home in the face of the supposed expert.
LAC-Tech 3y ago
Older nurses are the best. They've seen it all.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  The worst encounters I have had with nurses have been with older ones filtering information and using out of date practices because they think they have seen it all and now know best.
routerl 3y ago
> Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time. Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a medieval university's oral examination on medicine: the examiner asks why morphine puts people to sleep, and the student confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative essence". This is a bit like saying that things with an essence of gravity fall towards the earth, whereas things with an essence of levity float towards the sky. The examiner proudly accepts that answer and bestows upon the student the title of doctor. This was very funny to anyone educated in the time Voltaire was writing, since they would have known that morphine puts people to sleep because... it has round molecules with no sharp edges... Edit: correction below, thank you thaumasiotes.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a medieval university's oral examination on medicine: the examiner asks why morphine puts people to sleep, and the student confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative essence". It was Molière (<1622 - 1673), who wrote a play that featured an apothecary (explaining the functioning of opium to laymen), but no examinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginary_Invalid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginary_Invalid
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  I used to enjoy this blog written by a person who hated US medical school: https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medschoolhell.com/archives/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsch... People will probably find it offensive but it does explain a lot about why the stuff being taught is almost always not questioned. This post in particular: https://web.archive.org/web/20101211180021/http://www.medschoolhell.com/2005/12/29/pimptastic/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101211180021/http://www.medsch...
irjustin 3y ago
> unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk. Stay away from mommy blogs/forums. Those are the most toxic cesspools I've ever witnessed. Things are changing, some of the newer ones are not nearly as bad, but man the judgement is super real. Nurses are one thing, but personally, the worst is family members who think they know better and don't understand the data and that times have changed. FORMULA IS PERFECTLY FINE.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  What are some good mom blogs?
  - astura 3y ago
    Not a "mom blog," but covers pregnancy and childbirth from a scientific viewpoint plus some parenting topics - The Skeptical OB - https://www.skepticalob.com/ https://www.skepticalob.com/ the author was a practicing obstetrician, professor at Harvard Medical School, and mom of 4.
- laurent_du 3y ago
  Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this. Formula is the least worst substitute to maternal milk but going around and screaming that formula is perfectly fine, as if it was as good (or even better!) than maternal milk is denying some very well-established piece of science for likely ideological reasons.
  - cperciva 3y ago
    Milk is better than formula, but formula is better than starvation. There are way too many instances of infants "failing to thrive" because their mothers are bullied into relying on breast milk which they simply aren't producing enough of.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    > Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this. I have not seen result like this obtained in a randomized, controlled trial, and it is almost certainly false as stated: you're almost certainly exaggerating for effect, but doing that in scientific context is bad intellectual hygiene. All results of this sort that I have seen have been purely correlational, and as such suffer from selection bias. This might be true, but the evidence is far from conclusive, and if such consensus exists among medical professionals, it only shows how susceptible they are to groupthink and parroting the stuff they heard from the cathedra.
jvanderbot 3y ago
Our twins were put into my wife's arms, and we were wheeled into a room to stay for 48 hrs, being woken up every 2 hours by a nurse, which would wake up our kids, making the whole thing a living nightmare. I have no idea how I drove home. They had no care for my wife's ability to heal, rest, or anything, just subjecting us to the worst kind of institutionalized checklist torture. The medical system cares for nothing other than preventing lawsuits and providing a place for doctors to do their 1 hr of work on their 18 patients a day.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

My sister wouldn't sleep. The doctor constantly gave the "sigh, you're an idiot, you just do X and Y and they sleep" talk to my mother because nothing came up on their screening, even though my mother almost wanted to scream that something was clearly wrong and abnormal. Turns out, different doctor, serious vitamin deficiency. And medical incompetence by staff, not doctors, is also awful. My brother hated reading. He got glasses, still hated reading, my mother wondered why he could be so disobedient in that regard. They said, well, the prescription is right, he can clearly see fine. Turns out two years later that the lenses were installed on opposite sides. Right lens on left eye, left lens on right eye. A simple mistake, but the consequences...

darkclouds 3y ago
[dead]
maximus-decimus 3y ago
I do find it bizarre they don't verify you can see with your actual glasses.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  How would one have tested it instead?
  - analog31 3y ago
    They can verify the prescription. Also in principle they could use the same machine that finds the prescription, to verify that your net correction is zero with your glasses on. I once proved that my wife got the wrong prescription by just holding her old and new glasses up at arms length and seeing that things looked way different through them. The glasses place agreed.
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    Ask you to read letters again... with your actual new glasses on so you can verify how good you can see. When you get a car engine rebuilt, do they just diagnose, replace parts and then never start the engine themselves to verify it actually works?
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
It’s especially a problem with women and minorities. Doctors just don’t believe them. I’m neither of those and I had to convince my doctor that I had Lyme disease. I had the bullseye right where the tick had bit me. It was clearly Lyme disease. He assumed it couldn’t be because it took 8 weeks for the bullseye to show up (it’s usually a matter of days in America). He did not know that European Lyme disease takes much longer for the bullseye to appear. He at least had the tact to call me later and apologize after he did more research

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

froggertoaster 3y ago

After 5 kids in 10 years, you come to realize that the standards aren't agreed upon, and best practices/recommendations change YEAR TO YEAR without fail. Breastfeeding is one of the worst things hoisted upon mothers who are told "you must try no matter what" - seemingly ignoring the mental and physical health of the mother and the father all the while.

autoexec 3y ago
There are a lot of really good benefits to breastfeeding but it's not going to work for everybody or in every situation. I wouldn't fault a doctor for recommending it, but they shouldn't make someone feel bad if it isn't working out. I want recommendations and best practices to change as our understanding of things improve though. The alternative would mean that either no more research is being done, or doctors are just ignoring anything they didn't learn while in school.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  Our doctor was fine with it. The nurse called formula poison.
  - froggertoaster 3y ago
    > The nurse called formula poison. An absolutely gross and ridiculous position.
cycomanic 3y ago
My partner is a GP who has been doing early childhood screening. One thing she learnt after doing a special training is that advice on proper breastfeeding is very difficult to find. She found that with many mothers that had problems, some small adjustments could often make a huge difference (often causing a kind of hallelujah moment for the mothers). The issue is much of the advice given at the hospital is wrong or insufficient. The training the she did is the possums program from Australia, if somebody wants to look it up I think some resources are available for free.

mberning 3y ago

Same experience. The medical system is a reflection of pop parenting culture or vice versa. Everyone was so gung ho on breastfeeding, but when the milk didn’t come in and our son wasn’t interested in a dry breast the only advice given was “keep trying”. Then the shock and surprise when baby is losing weight. We had to demand formula, which was given grudgingly, and left the hospital a day later. If we have another we will do breast plus formula from the get go.

jt2190 3y ago
> We had to demand formula I don’t understand. You can’t just go to the store and buy infant formula?
- msteffen 3y ago
  In the US (not sure about other countries), new parents often stay at the hospital where the baby was delivered for a few days after the birth. During this time, the hospital often provides them all their food and childcare supplies: diapers, swaddles, diaper cream, wipes, etc. To get formula, you have to ask the hospital for it, but if your nurse doesn’t want to give it to you because they think you should try harder at breastfeeding, you get stuck. You could sneak out and buy some, but you’re pretty exhausted, and your partner is still stuck with a screaming, hungry baby until you’re back. (I realize after writing this out that being at the mercy of your hospital sounds draconian, but it can be really really great if you have a good nurse or midwife. They teach you how to bathe and swaddle the baby, how to nurse, how to rock them to sleep, etc. All skills you’ll need once you leave)
  - Huggernaut 3y ago
    In the Netherlands, for the 8 days after you give birth, someone comes to your house for some number of hours per day (in our case 8) to teach you these things, maybe do some tidying and cooking but most importantly, take the baby so you can sleep! This is called kraamzorg. It also has some similar pitfalls, as they are not necessarily specialists and it's still hard to disagree or do something else even if in your own home in the face of the supposed expert.

LAC-Tech 3y ago

Older nurses are the best. They've seen it all.

doublespanner 3y ago
The worst encounters I have had with nurses have been with older ones filtering information and using out of date practices because they think they have seen it all and now know best.

routerl 3y ago

> Every generation laughs at all the stupid stuff the previous generations believed, and then acts so confident that they’ve got it right this time. Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a medieval university's oral examination on medicine: the examiner asks why morphine puts people to sleep, and the student confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative essence". This is a bit like saying that things with an essence of gravity fall towards the earth, whereas things with an essence of levity float towards the sky. The examiner proudly accepts that answer and bestows upon the student the title of doctor. This was very funny to anyone educated in the time Voltaire was writing, since they would have known that morphine puts people to sleep because... it has round molecules with no sharp edges... Edit: correction below, thank you thaumasiotes.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a satirical account of a medieval university's oral examination on medicine: the examiner asks why morphine puts people to sleep, and the student confidently replies that morphine has a "dormative essence". It was Molière (<1622 - 1673), who wrote a play that featured an apothecary (explaining the functioning of opium to laymen), but no examinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginary_Invalid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imaginary_Invalid
matheusmoreira 3y ago
I used to enjoy this blog written by a person who hated US medical school: https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medschoolhell.com/archives/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101218031844/http://www.medsch... People will probably find it offensive but it does explain a lot about why the stuff being taught is almost always not questioned. This post in particular: https://web.archive.org/web/20101211180021/http://www.medschoolhell.com/2005/12/29/pimptastic/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101211180021/http://www.medsch...

irjustin 3y ago

> unworthy nurses making moms feel intense shame for not “trying hard enough” to somehow magically produce milk. Stay away from mommy blogs/forums. Those are the most toxic cesspools I've ever witnessed. Things are changing, some of the newer ones are not nearly as bad, but man the judgement is super real. Nurses are one thing, but personally, the worst is family members who think they know better and don't understand the data and that times have changed. FORMULA IS PERFECTLY FINE.

hackernewds 3y ago
What are some good mom blogs?
- astura 3y ago
  Not a "mom blog," but covers pregnancy and childbirth from a scientific viewpoint plus some parenting topics - The Skeptical OB - https://www.skepticalob.com/ https://www.skepticalob.com/ the author was a practicing obstetrician, professor at Harvard Medical School, and mom of 4.
laurent_du 3y ago
Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this. Formula is the least worst substitute to maternal milk but going around and screaming that formula is perfectly fine, as if it was as good (or even better!) than maternal milk is denying some very well-established piece of science for likely ideological reasons.
- cperciva 3y ago
  Milk is better than formula, but formula is better than starvation. There are way too many instances of infants "failing to thrive" because their mothers are bullied into relying on breast milk which they simply aren't producing enough of.
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  > Maternal milk is better than formula in every possible way and there is a perfect scientific consensus around this. I have not seen result like this obtained in a randomized, controlled trial, and it is almost certainly false as stated: you're almost certainly exaggerating for effect, but doing that in scientific context is bad intellectual hygiene. All results of this sort that I have seen have been purely correlational, and as such suffer from selection bias. This might be true, but the evidence is far from conclusive, and if such consensus exists among medical professionals, it only shows how susceptible they are to groupthink and parroting the stuff they heard from the cathedra.

jvanderbot 3y ago

Our twins were put into my wife's arms, and we were wheeled into a room to stay for 48 hrs, being woken up every 2 hours by a nurse, which would wake up our kids, making the whole thing a living nightmare. I have no idea how I drove home. They had no care for my wife's ability to heal, rest, or anything, just subjecting us to the worst kind of institutionalized checklist torture. The medical system cares for nothing other than preventing lawsuits and providing a place for doctors to do their 1 hr of work on their 18 patients a day.