"Child health nurse support"

My husband and I are first time parents living in the country around 2 hours from Perth. Both of our families are in Perth and they only visit once maybe twice a month. When our baby was around 4 weeks old our child health nurse picked up that even though she was content and healthy she hadn’t gained much weight and after discussing how we are feeding etc encouraged us to feed more often and come back the week after to keep an eye on her growth.

Again she didn’t gain much weight so she referred us to our local gp and provided our gp with notes as to what we had been doing and a chart of her growth. The gp recommended we feed even more often and come back in a few days to check her weight. She had a slight gain and our child health nurse encouraged us to be quite strong and go to Perth if needed to get her checked out. Our gp recommended we instead continue the regular feeding and switch her to formula over night and check again in a few days.

I was starting to get worried so went to the child health nurse 2 days earlier then suggested to get her weighed and talk about what we should do. She had lost weight in that time and the child health nurse encouraged me to follow my gut and head down to Perth to get her checked out. She followed this up with Perth sending through all our information so that it would be easier to get seen on the other end. It turns out that our daughter has a significant VSD which was causing her not to be able to feed properly. We spent a few days in hospital and at the time of writing this, are now at home waiting for surgery.

We are so thankful for the support and encouragement we received from our child health nurse. It is very hard as a first time parent to know what is and isn’t concerning and if you are just overreacting or if it’s a genuine concern. Without her support and encouragement we would not have gone down to Perth so quickly and would have waited longer to find out our child was requiring significant cardiac surgery.