How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Kids For Short Periods Of Time, or, April: Pediatrics

I have a long and storied history of detesting children.  They are loud, messy, stubborn creatures whose apparent sole intent is to overwhelm you with snot, poop, and really loud screams.  For most of my life to date I have studiously avoided them and certainly have never understood why anyone would choose to spend time around them.  This year, the Lord decided to change that.

The first step was when my really good friends started having kids.  To be around my friends, I had to be around their (surely) loud, messy, poopy, screaming children.  And despite myself I realised... babies maybe are not always terrible to be around.  And they can be sort of cute.  At times.  And maybe they are cuddly when they're not crying.  And sometimes when you look into their big, trusting eyes, you see the future and blah blah blah they're nice, okay?

You can imagine how horrified I was to find out that I like babies.  But kids, I thought.  Certainly kids are still irritating and stressful and zero units of fun.  So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I entered my last third year rotation.

My school gives students a mixture of outpatient and inpatient pediatrics, which is nice because it gives you greater exposure while still allowing you to get familiar with things like pediatric vital signs, lab values, most common diseases/ infections, etc.  And of course you see all ages.  So I had good opportunity to learn some things:

- Children get constipated a lot.  Like, a lot.  And they also get a lot of diarrhea.  Yet another similarity between elderly people and the very young: it's all about the poop.

- There is way too much asthma and obesity in our country.

- Pediatricians are vastly undercompensated given how hard they work and how valuable their services are.  And yet they're pretty cool people to be around.  Pediatricians like their jobs and like their patients, and now that I've seen both ends of that spectrum I know how much of a difference liking one's life makes to the kind of care patients receive.

- Sometimes, a toddler on sildenafil for his lungs is going to stare at you, slowly undo his diaper, and grab his penis. 

- FINE I ADMIT IT.  Kids are funny and fun.  And exhausting.  And they do scream and poop a lot, and sometimes cough RSV into your face.  Somehow this does not negate how fun they are.

The Lord showed me part of what all of this was for recently.  I have been praying about where to serve in my church, trying a few different areas and just feeling like God was closing doors in my face.  Youth?  No.  Bible study leader?  Not yet, at least.  Worship?  Surprisingly, no.  Finally I accepted what the Lord has been trying to tell me for a while but I didn't have the strength to acknowledge: for now at least, my way to help at church is with the little kids.  So I signed up.  And I love it, because kids are fun.

(And because their parents come and take them away at the end of the morning.)