Pediatrician? Check!

Well, we can cross one more thing off our to-do list!

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We were both a little surprised when we started seeing "interview a pediatrician" in various pregnancy books and online checklists.  Do people really interview doctors before signing up?  This was news to us, and at first seemed a bit odd.  But after checking around we realized it was common practice, so we decided to hop on the bandwagon.  Apparently even the doctors' offices {at least in our area} expect and sometimes even require to meet and chat with soon-to-be parents before the baby is born.

There is no one "right" way to meet with a potential pediatrician.  Different people with differing personalities have different approaches on this, I'm sure.

- Some people may not care much about getting specific questions answered as much as just meeting the doctor face-to-face and seeing if his/her personality matches your preferences (e.g., talkative, straightforward, etc).

- Depending on your individual preference, you may want a doctor that will advise you on issues that fall outside strict medical visits (e.g., breastfeeding, sleep training, etc.) or you may want a doctor that doesn't have strong views on these topics, so you don't feel pressured to follow their advice and instead feel comfortable making your own choices in those matters.

- The most important thing to you may be choosing a doctor's office that has extended/weekend/evening office hours and/or multiple locations, which makes last-minute sick visits easier to schedule.  Similarly, it may be important for you to choose an office that encourages email contact and/or electronic scheduling.  Or, these things might not be among your list of priorities!

- You may want to dive deep into specific questions, to ensure that the doctor's advice and opinions align closely with yours.

The good news is that these "interview" sessions allow you to see whether your opinions, preferences or priorities, whatever they may be, align with those of the doctor.

Well, today we met with and decided on a pediatrician for our baby.  The practice has been recommended to me by several people at my company who live in our city, and the specific doctor we chose was recommended by friends who live nearby and have been taking their 8 month old daughter to this doctor since birth.  We'd also read positive reviews online of the practice, so were pretty hopeful that this would be a good fit.

In our case, we definitely wanted to meet the pediatrician to ensure questions were not only tolerated but encouraged, as we expect to have MANY questions as we enter this new challenge of parenthood and don't want to feel like we're being rushed out of the office when we visit.  But, the doctor's views on certain items were also really important to us, so we prepared a list of questions to review with her.  We ended up creating our list of questions based partially on questions we'd read in books or on the web, partially on advice from other new parents, and of course our own curiosities.  :)

Lucky for us, the pediatrician we met with was very warm, very patient in answering all of our questions, and we feel comfortable choosing her to be our baby's pediatrician!  So that's one more thing we've crossed off our to-do list!

P.S. - For anyone out there looking for a pediatrician, and wondering what to think or ask about when you meet with him/her, I'd recommend searching the internet for sample interview questions and asking friends for advice on what they wish they'd known prior to selecting a pediatrician.

- Click here for a sample list of interview questions from BabyCenter.
- Click here for a list of sample questions from The Bump.

Happy interviewing!