Good Life: Mother's Are Almost Always Right
There were other, more serious moments that forced me to recognize that doctors aren’t perfect.
Welcome back to The Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss how to handle “expert” advice when it conflicts with what you know is right.
Mother’s Are Almost Always Right
One of my friends recently sent me a report showing that the medical community’s guidance on when to introduce peanut butter to children was completely wrong. I remember when the girls were younger and their pediatrician stressed the importance of waiting to introduce eggs, milk, and peanuts just in case they had an allergic reaction.
I don’t know why I didn’t listen to her at the time. I had no real reason not to trust her opinion. This was way before COVID or any of the transgender ideology insanity made it onto my radar. I just had a feeling, call it a mother’s intuition, that they were wrong. So I gave them all kinds of food whenever I felt the time was right for them. As it turns out, I was correct. By giving them peanut butter when the girls were little, I probably saved them from developing an allergy, according to the research she sent.
In light of where we stand with the medical community now, after everything parents have been through, I wonder if they’ll ever win back our trust.
I have a sister who is a doctor, and it’s not as if my children don’t see their pediatrician once a year for their well visit or go to the ER when emergencies happen. Still, I can’t help but look at that entire industry now with massive skepticism.
I should probably include a disclaimer that whatever I write in this newsletter is not medical advice, so that our lawyers don’t read this and burst out in stress hives. So consider this a fair warning.
After reading the report on peanut butter, I began thinking about all the times I had deviated from standard medical advice to do what I knew was right, and it turned out to be the best thing for our children.
One of the light-hearted examples of this was when our oldest daughter was a newborn. She had colic. Any mother who has ever experienced a colicky baby knows exactly how difficult this can be for any mom, but especially a brand-new one. The only way our daughter would sleep comfortably was on her stomach, but the pediatrician had warned me incessantly that if I did that, I was risking her smothering herself in the middle of the night.
“She wouldn’t even know she was doing it,” she told me.
So here I was sitting up every night rocking an inconsolable baby to sleep and then attempting the impossible transfer from my arms to her bassinet. I thought I had done it. Before I took a single step back, she was crying again. I tried everything from sleep sacks to swaddles. Nothing would help relieve the pain she was feeling.
Until one night, I put her down in the bassinet swaddled on her stomach.
It felt like a miracle. I was fighting what felt like an unwinnable war, and then all of a sudden, the crying stopped. She slept 6 straight hours that night. I remember waking up feeling like a new woman, and then I realized it was the longest stretch of sleep I got in weeks. That’s when the fear crept in. Maybe the doctor was right, and she smothered herself to death, and here I am, a worthless mother who traded comfort for her life. I leaned over the bed to find her sleeping peacefully.
Every night, I went against her doctor’s advice, and we both finally got the rest we needed.
I hate to think what the first six months of her life would have been like had I not laid her on her stomach that night. Not to mention the confidence it gave me as a first-time mother. My daughter was suffering, and I helped her in a real, tangible way.
There were other, more serious moments that forced me to recognize that doctors aren’t perfect. But like many people, the way my two daughters with asthma were treated during COVID was really the straw that broke the camel’s back. Why were they forced to wear masks when it made their breathing, which was already labored due to the cold they had (which is why we were at the doctor!), worse? Why did the speech therapist claim it wouldn’t affect their therapy if they used a mask? Why did we lock healthy kids away in their rooms to learn online when there was very little risk for them, even if they caught it?
A rational person, even without a medical degree, can see that none of this makes any sense.
I don’t think the moral of the story is that doctors don’t know what they are doing. I just think that you cannot entrust every ounce of your parenting choices to people who, no matter how well-intentioned, do not know your child as well as you do. Sometimes, you have to consider all the information you have been given, including what your child is showing you they need, and make the decision that is best for both of you.
WHAT I SAW THIS WEEK:
I can’t stop thinking about the Virginia teenagers (mostly girls) standing outside voting locations begging adults to please elect conservative school board members so that they don’t have to worry about walking into their bathroom or locker room at school to find a boy pretending to be a girl in there. You can read all about that HERE.
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