Artemis has a new pediatrician. Her name is Dr. Ma. I like her because she speaks good English and also because our first doctor was such a terrible quack.

After the communications problems I had at the Long Tian Hospital, I decided to return to the Qingdao Municipal Hospital for pediatric care. The first few times I took her there we saw a doctor who did not speak a word of English. Luckily the International Clinic had a nurse who could translate for us.

Artemis is a perfect baby, yet this crazy doctor was unable to appreciate her. She said that Artemis was too small and that I should be feeding her more. After putting my daughter on the scale she deducted an arbitrary fraction of a kilogram to represent the weight of her clothes and diaper. What is the point of having a scale sensitive enough to measure ten decimal places if you are going to guess how much a baby weighs?

She also said that Artemis had a too-strong startle reflex and that she was not getting enough vitamin D. Our nurse mis-translated that part. She said that Artemis’s startle reflex was so strong because she wasn’t getting enough vitamin D.

“Wait,wait, wait. What does vitamin D have to do with a startle reflex?”

“OK, I will ask her. . . OK, maybe not related.”

Then there was the problem of the zits. When Artemis was a few weeks old, she had tiny pimples on her face and chest. The doctor told me it was just normal newborn acne but she wanted to prescribe something to make it go away.

“No, I don’t want to give her anything for it. It will go away by itself and besides, it isn’t bothering her.”

“Does she cry at night?” asked the doctor, through the translator.

“Sure, sometimes.”

“Then it must be bothering her.”

I didn’t like or trust this doctor at all. I let her prescribe all kinds of things that I had no intention of giving Artemis. There was a hormone cream for her face, vitamin A and D supplements and some weird calcium powder to mix with water. I was dreading our two-month check up. I couldn’t imagine what this crazy lady would do next.

And that was when we met Dr. Ma. She said hello, she shook my hand and she smiled at Artemis. She did all the things that doctors in America do. She weighed Artemis and measured her (”She has grown so much! She looks great!”) She tested her eyes and turned her over on her belly to see if she could lift herself (”Look at her lift her head! She is doing great!”) And rather than push a bunch of superfluous supplements on us she told me to make sure I eat well. Artemis is obviously healthy, she explained, and she would continue to take everything she needed from my breast milk. In order for me to protect my health, I need to eat a balanced diet.

Everything that Dr. Ma did was consistent with the books I had read on children’s health. Thank God for those books. Without them I might not have known what to do when faced with medical advice that didn’t make sense. Your Child’s Health by Barton Schmitt was especially useful. It was recommended to me by a friend of my mother’s who was a pediatric nurse. Everything that Dr. Ma said was consistent with this book. The other doctor was coming from a different planet.

I don’t know how much of my reaction to our first doctor was based on a clash of cultures and how much of it was personal. No doubt there are plenty of pediatricians in the U.S. who are just as bad as this doc in China. If we had been in America and I had a similar experience I would have done the same thing. I would have done some research and trusted my instincts.

The difference is that in America there would be a lot more English-speaking pediatricians to choose from.