Baby In A Hurry, Parents In A Fog

6:35 a.m. -- 3 mos., 24 days old

Just awoke from a dream in which I was being chastisted by my cousins for allowing my baby (Baby A, but older) to play unsupervised in a backyard with a pool. Started the dream certain my cousins were paranoid, ended it knowing I was consigning my child to a watery grave. Hmmm. Could I be the tiniest bit anxious?

Another trip to the pediatrician yesterday. (Last night, actually. Our good doc sees patients until 9 p.m.) Baby A has in the past week been peeing more frequently, it seems, and over the past couple of days she's had a diaper rash -- her first. (Her thrush wasn't a rash.) M looked up the symptoms and concluded it could be a urinary tract infection, likely caused by poop in her urethra. My first thought had been diabetes -- my nephew's first sign, at the age of about 8, had been frequent urination. Bring her in, the doctor said.

Baby A didn't freak out at the doc's this time; she was anxious, but we soothed her continuously and she stayed calm. Plus we had a lot to do before the doctor even showed up.

First she was weighed (16 lbs. 2 ozs. -- an ounce a day since our visit 12 days ago) and temperature-checked (normal). Then another nurse came and asked us to remove her diaper, then rewiped her (had I done a poor job?) and attached a plastic collection bag, larger than a baggie, over her vulva with some adherent that stuck but didn't hurt when removed -- Post-Its for infants.

The nurse reattached her diaper. Move to another room, she told us. We did. We laid Baby A down on an exam table and waited for her to pee. I tried the trick that works on M: prattling about Niagra Falls and the Russian River and waters coursing over Hoover Dam. Between sentences I hissed, imitating a broken pipe. In seconds, Baby A was filling her plastic bag.

We fetched the nurse, who unstuck the bag ("Wow! That was fast!") and told us to move to another room. We did. She came back in minutes with a piece of paper listing the results. "Glucose normal" was all I could understand -- no diabetes! The doc shortly followed and said the urine was 100 percent normal.

Let's start at the beginning, he said. How often are you feeding her? About every two hours, we said. How much are you feeding her each time? About two ounces, we said. You're working too hard, he said; her stomach should be able to accommodate four ounces about every four hours. She's probably peeing so much because she's got so much coming in so often. Wow. Why didn't we think of that?

A quick examination showed all was normal. Hey, the doc said, she's interested in her feet. Oh yeah, we said, she's discovered them since our last visit to you. Now she thinks sucking on her toes is the greatest thing in world history. Put her on her back, and within seconds the feeties of her onesies are sodden.

That's 5-month-old behavior, the doc said. Very unusual for a 3-month-old. As we saw last time, you've got a baby in a hurry here. Who might she be taking after? M said, Both of us. I pointed a thumb at M. (These days, I only hurry trying to finish crossword puzzles.) Yeah, M said. I guess mostly me.

Hey, we remembered -- what about the diaper rash? That's probably from teething, he said. Come again, we said. Has she been drooling more lately? Oh yeah, tons more. Plus, M said, she's been chomping her gums on my nipples when she nurses. (The explanation for the occasional yowls and yelps with which M interrupts otherwise peacful feedings.) Well, the doc said, she's swallowing a lot of her own spit, which is acidic. Teething babies often get rashes around the anus. She's a little early for that, but as we've noted, she's a baby in a hurry.

He instructed us to apply zinc oxide as a protective barrier, then clean it each time with Cetaphil. We thanked him profusely.

M said, A lot of what you do must be relieving the anxiety of clueless parents. Well, the doctor said, that is a big part of the job. But I like that part of my job. Pediatricians get looked down on by other doctors because we're not performing cardiac catheterizations and the like. But if you come to me with a fear, and I can relieve that fear, and everybody goes home happy, that's not a small thing, right?

No sir, doc. Not small at all.