Business lessons learned at your pediatrician

You can learn more about your business in one well child doctor visit than anywhere else. Well at least I did today. The best doctor I’ve ever had has decided to move to OR. Dr. Bonnie Nedrow is a midwife and a pediatrician so I saw her all through my pregnancy with Zane and then she was his doctor after he was born. We love her so much and I cried at our last visit with her. I know I can’t expect to find another Dr. Bonnie in the bunch but I do have standards. I hate going to the baby mill pediatricians. Where you have no relationship with the doctor that you see for maybe 10 minutes even though you have sat in the exam room for 45 minutes waiting for your precious visit with him/her. And I like to support the more mom and pop type places in general. So I found a pediatrician through my insurance website that was relatively close to our house, 20 minutes. And she has her own practice. The extra bonus is that she is a family doctor so we could all go to see her as our primary doc.
First off let me say that the place was immaculate. When my 1 year old dropped a cheerio and popped it in his mouth before I could get to it I didn’t cringe. It was that clean. And for people who know me this is a huge thing for me, I’m a bit of a clean freak. The place might as well be a showroom at Ikea for a doctor’s office. Nothing is wrong with that. I joke that they film the Ikea commercials at our house. Hey it’s cute and affordable and we’re not the type of people who will hold on to anything long enough to make the purchase of buying furniture that will last through years of torment. So that being said. The woman at the front desk, the receptionist is friendly enough and smiles when we come in. I tell her who we are. No one else is there…No other patient…. keep this in mind, the entire 1 ½ hours we are there. Which is mildly eerie. Well I have to ask, “Do I need to fill anything out? This is our first time here.” “Oh right! Duh! Yeah this.” As she hands me a clipboard and papers to fill out. So I get to work on the papers and then we wait to be called. The same receptionist appears in front of us and says “Zane your next”…but this time she is wearing this little nurse jacket. Now I am getting a very weird feeling. She takes us into an exam room, it’s just as clean as the waiting room, and tells me to take off Zane’s clothes down to the diaper. Standard stuff. She then holds out her arms to hold him and says, “I’m going to take him to be weighed.” I smile as politely as I can and say, “I’d prefer to be with him at all times.” Call me protective but I’m not just going to hand over my baby to someone I don’t know…nurse or no nurse. So we go down the hall to weigh him and I ask, “do you want me to take his diaper off?” “Oh no leave it on. What we do is I’ll weigh him and then we’ll go back to the room and then you can take his diaper off and I’ll then go weigh his diaper and subtract it from this total.” Puzzled I smile and say, “why don’t I just take it off right here and you don’t have to do the math of subtracting.” “Oh I don’t want him to have an accident and pee all over me and the new scale.” Hmmm. So the scale is actually top of the line baby scale but it’s in this built in cubby area so she suggests I lay him down and I tell her that it will be best if I sit him up cause otherwise if I lay him down he will be able to kick the walls and the weight won’t be accurate. She insists to lay him down so I do and Zane promptly starts kicking the walls and the number of his weight is jumping all over the place and she says “well it looks to be about 19 ½ pounds. We’ll just call it that.” My mouth hits the floor. The weight was jumping between 19-22 pounds depending on when he kicked the walls. So from there she takes me to another room to figure out how long he is. So she has this measuring thing, I’ve never actually seen anyone use one of these. Every doctor we’ve had whether it was a naturopath doctor or a pediatrician at a baby mill office does the classic lay him down on the paper exam table and marks the paper at the top of his head and then stretches his legs and marks below his feet. This is a link to an example of the device she used, so you can really get a picture in your head.
http://www.miami-med.com/images/SECA-210.jpg
Well on this device is a clear picture of how to use it. I’ve never seen one of these before and in 10 seconds I get it. Well instead of laying Zane with his head touching the top the way the baby is pictured in the link and in the picture/directions on the mat she lays him so that his feet touch the bottom and then moves the top part to measure his head and says while tapping his belly and smiling at him…and I quote!!…”14 ½ inches! You are getting so big!”
Ok I totally cannot even believe she is thinking my kid is only 14 ½ inches!!! So I say, “I’m sorry I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job but that measurement is all wrong. He was 22 inches long when he was born, that naked Ken doll that Logan has is 14 ½ inches!” So I actually move Zane and measure him myself. Shocked that this girl has this job and now worried about the doctor that would hire such a freakin’ idiot!
Side note Logan has taken to carrying around a naked Ken Barbie Doll that use to be mine. I am always surprised by how many people have a problem with this. I don’t know if it’s because the doll is naked and my son is carrying him around or that I allow my son to carry a Ken Barbie doll. The whole idea that boys can’t play with dolls I don’t get.
But I digress.
So after that we go back to the room and she wants to take his temperature, under the arm. So Zane is sitting on my lap and she is barely holding it under his arm and after about a minute she says “well it hasn’t beeped and it’s not going up so I’ll just say it’s at 94”. Once again my mouth hits the floor. She marks his chart and says the doctor will be in soon. So we wait. I’m watching the clock. Keep in mind no other patients are waiting in the waiting room and after 45 minutes the doctor comes in. I’m irritated for having to wait that long. But the doctor is actually really nice and both of the boys take a liking to her right off the bat so that puts me at ease. Though I have a ton of questions about Zane’s lack of wanting to eat any finger foods other than cheerios and she kind of skirts around the topic and wants to talk about baby proofing. I inform her that we haven’t stopped baby proofing our house since having Logan who will be 3 next month. Anyway, she brings up that Connie the quote-un-quote nurse will be in to do his immunizations and I quickly make an excuse that we don’t have the time to do that and we’ll have to come back another day. My very polite way of saying that woman is not coming anywhere near my child with a needle and we won’t ever be back here.
So what I learned from the situation through a businesswoman’s eyes was the importance of the person you are hiring to be the first face a customer sees. These people should be properly trained and dressed to represent your company.
Hopefully the next doctor we see will live up to my Dr Bonnie expectations.

15 a day

I got a call from a magazine saying that they are going to feature my Picasso Chalk Mats in their December issue. I am so ecstatic and stressed out at the same time. The woman who called said to expect a minimum of 1 thousand orders. Okay sure I can do this. I figured out that I need to make 15 a day. With 2 kids constantly under foot this is a lot harder than it seems. My evenings are filled with cutting and my days are filled with diaper changing, making meals from scratch or almost, raising children who are both kind and intelligent and sewing. Naptime is the most sacred time of the day. I do not answer my phone. I do not check my email. I sit at the sewing machine for 2 hours and I create. I create Art. I create what I love and I create my dream.
Wish me luck.