CHILDRENS HEALTH

What to take

Section Map

This isn't exhaustive, it's just what I see as most useful/important!

• Apparently for the first visit you're meant to take all the information you have about your pregnancy and birth. I have forgotten this for each of my four babies and nobody seemed to mind..
• The Groeiboek and vaccination cards (essential for injections).
• A nice clean towel or fleecy something to snuggle the baby or infant in. Dressing-gowns are just too fiddly for tiny infants, and dressing them back up again after the weigh-in is pointless because it needs to be examined (nearly) naked in a moment anyway. I always kept a special Clinic Towel clean for these occasions, which was slightly less grey and second-hand-looking than the rest of my infants' very hand-me-down layette. Once you're up to the toddler stage, the weighing and measuring can be done with onesie or vest and pants on and things are easier; clinics tend to be terribly warm anyway, because of all these undressed infants.
  

• A nappy or two: I always put the very sweetest and most attractive cloth nappy on for the clinic, just so that I could start conversations about cloth and watch the incredulous expressions. The Dutch, as a rule, just don't do cloth nappies.
• With luck, you needn't worry about amusements for any older sibs who have to be dragged along. In the waiting area there should be plenty of toys, books and the like to keep them busy, although this can vary from clinic to clinic.
• Any questions you have for the doctor/nurse, written down. This is seriously the only way you will remember all those things you intended to ask.
• Food of some kind for the very young (and possibly for those older sibs, if your waiting times tend to run on a bit.).

Don't be shy about breastfeeding as you wait; nobody minds (quite the reverse, they encourage it!) and it is in fact a nice easy place to practise feeding before you really 'go public' with it .

Preventative side