What Doctors Don't Tell YouOur report last time about paediatricians’ inability to recognize that babies feel pain just as we do inspired a few of you to write in.
One woman reports an incident involving her son, then aged just 10 days, who was used as a pincushion by a cluster of hospital staff. He was stabbed six times in the heel before the doctors were satisfied with the amount of blood they had been able to extract. Throughout the traumatic procedure, the doctors were laughing, clearly oblivious to the distress they were causing the baby.
Those who want to understand more about the minds and pain thresholds of babies might want to read a book called The Mind of Your Newborn Baby, which one reader is recommending. It’s written by David Chamberlain, and published in 1998 by North Atlantic Books. Chamberlain argues that babies can hear, feel and act while in the womb, and that some small children are able to remember their sensations when they were in the womb.
Required reading for pediatricians, our reader thinks.
Daniel Redwood DC
Tom Ferguson MD
