Energy healing...
So my flaky pediatrician recommended I take Bella to an energy healer. According to her, the reason Bella was not gaining weight is because we have some unresolved "issues" surrounding... well, something. Maybe the birth, maybe something else. But an energy healer is what she recommended.
For a six week old baby still a pound below her birthweight.
There is so much about this that pisses me off, I hardly know where to begin. First of all, why not cut this complex Gordian knot and just find out if the baby is, you know... getting enough to eat?!?!
Next... Bella was being herself at the visit. Herself, meaning, alert, beautiful, wide-eyed and happy, smiling and rapt with fascination at the world. Full of pep and vim. How can you say that baby is unhappy?
The catch-22 here is, of course, that if my baby *were* unhappy and screaming all the time, I would've known much sooner that she wasn't getting enough to eat. As it was, she was so darned happy *all the time*... as long as I didn't put her down (which for me was not such a big problem)... that I had no idea she was hungry the whole time.
Of course now that we are supplementing, Bella is gaining normally. There is not a thing wrong with this child, and she certainly doesn't seem traumatized in any way, by any thing. I have to wonder what she *would* be traumatized by. She has not had a single moment to cry alone since she was born. The few times she's woken up alone recently (when I've snuck out of bed with her to go pump), I've come in to check on her and found her lying there smiling at the ceiling fan, happy as a clam. This child is *happy!* I would know if she weren't and go to the ends of the earth to remedy it. What mama wouldn't?!?!
Energy healing. Pshaw. This is, btw, another way of saying "Reiki." I mean no offense, either to anyone who enjoys such a thing. Whatever floats your boat. But "energy healing" is not going to fix a baby who is not getting enough to eat!
(Yes, we have a new pediatrician now!)