Pediatrician question

Hi Ladies--Just wondering when most of you found your pediatrician? I heard it is important to do it earlier with twins--is this because the pediatrician is the one who actually comes to the hospital after you deliver? I figured teh hospital just provides who you want, but not sure how that works. Did you look for someone in particular when looking for one for twins? Is it important to get started soon on that--I'm just 15W3D, but with teh holidays things are crazy, so just wondering---thanks!

 

If you choose a ped by the time you deliver he/she will be the ones to check out your babies while they are there, as long as the ped has privileges at that hospital. If you don't choose one then the hospital ped will check them out. I would start asking around now, do you have any friends or family that uses a ped around you? That's how I found ours with my oldest DD, I went with a friend's recommendation. I would want the ped I would be using with the babies, to be the one to check them out after birth. It couldn't hurt to start thinking bout this in the next few weeks.

 

I started looking sometime in the 2nd trimester. It wound up being very easy because there is a local practice with 6-8 doctors in it that nearly everyone I know uses -- so I just found out which of those doctors was accepting new patients and signed up with him. I haven't been 100% happy with him, but satisfied enough that it isn't worth the trouble to change.

If you have very strong opinions about parenting that may run counter to the medical "mainstream" -- for example, if you want to delay vaccinations or not vax at all, do attachment parenting, raise your children vegetarian... (and these are just examples, please nobody flame me!) -- it may be more important to find a ped who agrees with your views or at least won't give you a hard time about them. DH and I are very mainstream, and also willing to just ignore the things the ped says that we don't agree with.

We also don't really care that it's a huge practice and the doctor never remembers our names. But some parents would be horrified by this, and want to take more time to interview a lot of doctors and get a real feel for the practice.

What the PP said is also important. Our ped actually did not have privileges at the hospital where I delivered, but his practice is affiliated with another one that was based at that hospital. So although the doctors who saw the babies when they were born are not the ones we wound up using, all their records transferred seamlessly.

 

We will be usin the same pedi we use for my stepson. We adore her even though we don't use her much as we don't have primary custody of DSS. I'm very glad that I did contact her early about the twins because she was not taking any new patients. She did, of course, agree to take our girls as their brother is already a patient. Also, she scheduled an hour out of her day when I was 19 weeks to sit down and talk with me about what to expect with the girls after they are born. I've now been in the hospital for 2 weeks and she is going to come by the next time she does rounds up here and talk with me again now that we've had a few changes in the girl's gestation.

Definitely go ahead and do some research. You need to be comfortable with your pedi because you're going to spend a lot of time with them early on!

 

I ended up getting a referral for our Pedi from my OB - she let me know her favorite Pedis that work with the hospital I was to be delivering at.
I called their office about 2 months before my girls were born to give them the heads up on my estimated due-date.
They let me know that once I went to the hospital for my c-section to let them know the pedi's name & that either he or one of his associated (whoever was on call) would come once my babies were born.

 

I'd ask your friends who they use. Do you know where you're going to deliver? We'll be at Dekalb, and when we went on our hospital tour they gave us a list of peds with privileges at Dekalb Medical. So we'll choose one of them (someone my friend uses) for when we are in the hospital, but we'll go to another as soon as we get out. It's good to go to someone close to you. PM me if you need recommendations!

 

If you want to check them out first, give yourself at least a month or two. I was very picky and went through a lot before I could find the one I could trust taking care of my kids.