The Unexpected Twist in My Journey to Fatherhood

Care and Feeding

What if there’s an emergency?

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Drazen Zigic/iStock/Getty Image Plus. 

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column.
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Dear Care and Feeding, …

How do you know when to take a child to the doctor? Is there a way to know in advance what things are and aren’t doctor-worthy? I’ve spent time with kids but never medical care for them. I grew up middle class in the United States, but in an area where medical care was basically rationed. Sure, my parents had insurance, but many people didn’t, there weren’t enough doctors and they weren’t nearby. For example, I had bad asthma as a kid and got colds that turned into pneumonia more times than I can count on both hands. But our pediatricians all needed evidence of nine days of symptoms before they’d see me to prescribe antibiotics. My sister had serious period problems in her teens that no one even offered her birth control for until she took herself to the hospital at 18. My neighbor died of a stroke because the doctor couldn’t see him for high blood pressure for weeks, and the ER was more than two hours away.

I know I don’t go to the doctor enough. It’s taken me a long time to unlearn this as “normal” and in adulthood, I’ve looked up the stats; my childhood classmates had a higher mortality rate than the average kid at the time. Everyone wringing their hands during COVID about medical care access restrictions made no sense to me—the level of access they were talking about seemed worse than normal, but not extreme. Turns out that people I’ve talked to at age 30 don’t have a lot of memories of childhood funerals. My wife and I are going to try for kids, and I felt pretty confident until I realized one wrong medical choice could kill them! I don’t want to be a dad who puts all those tasks on the mom, either. How do I get a good sense of what’s “normal” before we have a baby? I’m looking for parenting classes but none of them talk about this. My wife seems more comfortable with her knowledge, but what if I have to make a decision solo? What if it’s an emergency? Is there a list or schedule pediatricians give out?

—Future Dad

Dear Future Dad,

I’m sorry you’re in a bit of a mind game about this, and I wish I could tell you there is a magical rule of thumb out there, but there isn’t. The thing about planning for kids is that you can make all the preparations and advance decisions you want, and many of them are going to fly out the window the moment you have an actual real-life kid.

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