Guest Blogger
Wendy Sue Swanson MD MBe
Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician and mother of two young boys. She maintains a busy pediatric practice and writes Seattle Mama Doc blog, the first pediatrician-authored blog for a major Children's hospital.
As a blogger, she shares things she has learned in med school and in practice, but also things she learns at home while raising her boys. She interprets research and hopes to dispel myth.
Like so many parents, she struggles with work-life-balance and her choice to work while raising her children. Seattle Mama Doc caters to one principle: parents just want to do what is right. The desperate love we have for our children can shock us into good and sometimes bad decisions.
Dr Swanson believes parents search for and sincerely desire simple answers to the How-What-Why-Who of parenting, the essence of doing right for their children. Often it’s not a simple, isolated situation, or one as complicated as it may feel. And, the abundance of online noise invokes fear in all of us when making decisions for our children. Dr Swanson tells her story without provoking fear. From dog food, to Tylenol, to getting a baby to sleep, she provides a voice for the struggle so many of us feel when stuck in a moment of indecision.
If It Were My Child: No Tylenol before Shots
Earlier this year there was a massive Tylenol recall. The recall included Infant Tylenol drops, Children’s Tylenol, as well as many other children’s medications. I’m not exaggerating when I say massive, but generic medications (liquid acetaminophen made by Walgreens or CVS, for example) were not included. The recall was a great reminder that generics are [...]
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3 Things Not To Do (When Getting Your Baby To Sleep Through The Night)
There is a lot of information (and opinion) about how to get your infant to sleep through the night. Cry it out/don’t cry it out, rocking/no rocking, co-sleeping/crib sleeping, white noise/no noise, breastfeeding or bottle-feeding. Everyone has an idea about what works. Like I said earlier, there is very little data to support one technique [...]
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Less Is More
I keep saying less is more. So often, with children, the less we do, the better. Pediatricians often pride themselves on being smart enough to know when to do…..nothing.
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If It Were My Child: No Benadryl on the Plane
Celebrating with family and friends is one yummy thing in life even in the face of family dynamics-drama. I know it doesn’t feel yummy for everyone. I’m not trying to sound Pollyanna-ey. I’ve had the dark years of holidays, too. When the being together made me feel lonelier than truly connected. But, that’s not where [...]
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The Balance between Work and Parenting
I’ve been caught in a recurring cloud this week even though the sky has been essentially spotless. It’s been one of those weeks where I find myself spinning around to grab the cup of milk or the steering wheel, muttering, “What am I doing?”
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Competitive Parenting
Raising children in a world full of accessible opinion is a funny thing. Everyone seems to have an idea about how to do this right. Stay home, work full time, work part time, return to work, cry to sleep, not cry to sleep, pacifier, no pacifier…the recipe for each of us is different, of course. [...]
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Nothing I learned in Med School: On Parenting
Stumbled upon an article summary last week, “Bad Behavior Linked to Poor Parenting.” I am going to call this BBLtPP. I clicked on the link with butterflies, hoping not to find something like: We’re following a pediatrician with 2 sons, one doctor husband, and one overweight Labrador who live in Seattle. She writes a blog. [...]
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