woodwardiocom

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My daughter is in her little swing on the floor next to me.

I would be holding her in one arm while typing with the other, but the smell off her umbilical cord stump is worse than that dead mouse from a few weeks ago. Yeesh! I'm being robbed of new-baby-smell!

(Yes, we checked with a medical professional, and have some countermeasures in place.)

(Edit: "Normal" here means "within the normal range of possibilities", not "middle of the bell curve".)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

archangelbeth

Heh! I was just about to say, "that doesn't sound normal."

Lucky you, that she'll let you put her in the swing.

From:

drwex

In my experience with my own kids, and with other nearly-newborns I've held this has not been my experience.

From:

woodwardiocom.livejournal.com

Wex, did you just come to me with anecdotes and zero research, in the face of the opinion of a medical professional? You know better than that.

It's not middle-of-the-bell-curve, but it's within the normal range of events.

From:

drwex

My opinion of medical professionals' opinions is that they're data, not absolute truth. Medical professionals are human and misremember things. Also, they don't always have time to keep up on research related to things outside the standard deviation.

THAT said, I deliberately phrased it as "this is outside my experience". As with other out-of-ordinary things it's sometimes worth double-checking or even getting another opinion.

For example, pediatricians regularly give (and mine wanted to give) kids Vit K shots at birth. Doing my own research on primary literature I found that this medical professional opinion was not well-supported by the data. So perhaps I tend to approach things with a larger-than-usual dose of skepticism, regardless of the degreed nature of the professional.

From:

woodwardiocom.livejournal.com

My opinion of medical professionals' opinions is that they're data

And anecdotes are not. I am pretty much never going to pick the anecdote of one of my no-background-in-medicine friends over an informed doctor's opinion.

I am going to do the research, and 30 seconds of Googling on "umbilical cord stump smells" (while B. was on the phone with the doc) was thoroughly reassuring.

From:

drwex

You seem to be responding to something I didn't say. A response of the form "Yeah, it may seem unusual but looking online I found stuff that confirms this" would equally well respond to the question, but without assuming that I am somehow trying to tell you that the doc is wrong.

'nuff said.