The woes of living overseas

This is what a sweet baby looks like after a bath. He's all lotioned and baby-powdered up, hair brushed and new 'jamas, and his hair hasn't had time to stand up yet. He looks more and more like his daddy every single day.

Anyway, it's nearly time for Hayden's two month check up, so I called the clinic last week for an appointment with Dr. Garde. She is unavailable. There are 11,000 people in this community and we have one pediatrician. So she literally only has time to see the 2-week appointments (so she can at least meet the babies and moms) and the sick kids. So we have to get a referral to a pediatrician on the economy, much like my OB care. I went to the nurses' office yesterday to get a referral. I waited 20 minutes (not bad for our clinic) and headed in. Their computers were down, so it took 20 more minutes to get a piece of paper saying Hayden can have a referral. However, I was unaware of the new system for referrals. Now instead of waiting for hours, you sign up for an appointment. When I got down there, at 2pm on Monday, I got THE last appointment for the week, which is Thursday afternoon. So now I have an appointment to make an appointment. Hilarious.

The other side of it is that we can't get his immunizations until he sees a doctor. Apparently you have to have a healthy baby before you pump him full of diseases. This time around he'll get three shots and one oral vaccine. I'm not looking forward to it, but it'll be over soon, and it will DEFINITELY hurt him more than it hurts me.

The good news is that Dr. Garde has personally met and interviewed all the pediatricians to which she refers us, and said if she were a civilian, she would want to work in all of their private practices. So hopefully we'll find one we like on the first try. Interviewing pediatricians in Germany isn't an easy process, and we're limited in choice, so I'm going to hope Dr. Garde has done her homework and done it well!