I’ve worked in A&E – but raising a newborn baby is even harder

Before I got into my work now – creating healthy eating TV shows and cookbooks – I worked in A&E alongside my full-time work as a GP, and also in the intensive care unit for two years.

My beautiful baby who is now 14 weeks, however, has proved by far my most demanding patient.

How could this be, you might ask? The emergency room is notoriously challenging. Patients come in with heart attacks. On one occasion, a patient from the mental health ward vanished, sparking a frantic search throughout the hospital, including the car park. Eventually, we found him hiding under the table in my boss’s office – with my keys in his pocket.

One of my more awkward moments in A&E involved a female patient who presented with abdominal swelling and constant fatigue. She mentioned she hadn’t had sexual intercourse in five years, yet her pregnancy test came back positive during our assessment.

Despite fairly direct questions to determine whether sperm had come anywhere near her, we made little progress. It was only when we wheeled in the ultrasound scanner and pointed to the 20-week-old foetus on screen that her memory was jogged about an encounter a few months previously.

In one intensive care unit when I was working in Australia, I had a patient who had had major abdominal surgery, which, naturally, involved a cocktail of drugs, including general anaesthetic. Disassociation and delirium is not uncommon in situations like these.

Two police officers turned up on the ward, telling us the patient had phoned to say he was being held captive as a prisoner by people trying to kill him, and that he was being injected with all kinds of things by us (that last one was true of course). I explained to the young police officers,why he was delirious and apologised for wasting their time. But they continued to investigate as though we were in CSI.

Working in emergency medicine and being on call meant working shifts over Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but at least we could hand over at the end and eventually go home.

That’s not the case with a baby – parenting is permanent, with no weekends or holidays off. There’s no “clocking out” at the end of the day.

Before I was one of those ridiculously disciplined people who has a distinct morning routine starting at 5am. I’d journal, meditate, fast, and not look at my phone until 9am. I’d try to be in bed by 9.30 and yes, I’d do a full wind-down routine with camomile tea and lavender on the pillows. Gosh I’m annoying. Since having a baby? All totally out the window, of course.

It starts well. He has his bathtime routine from 6pm to 6.30pm, then it sometimes takes an hour-and-a-half to feed him. And then you’ve got to burp him and put him down. Then 30 minutes later, even though you’ve rocked him to sleep he’s up. As a doctor, you deal with patterns and probabilities – but I’m constantly flummoxed as to what my baby needs and what may or may not be right for him. And I wouldn’t even say I’m an anxious parent.

You give him more milk and then he spits that up and then for no reason whatsoever he decides to projectile vomit. Then he’s up at 1am again because the last time he fed was (only) a couple of hours ago, then the same at 2.30 in the morning. Honestly, the things that come out of babies are truly enough to rival what I dealt with in A&E.

“Poonamis” are the real concern, though. My wife spent days perfecting her Pinterest board for the kid’s nursery, designing the most aesthetically pleasing, safari-themed room. And since coming into this world, as a lovely token of thanks, our son has duly pooped all over it – the carpet, the boucle chair, the glass side table. The wall’s been smeared so bad we’re having to paint over it.

All this might make it sound like I’m not constantly enamoured by my baby. He is honestly the best gift I’ve ever received, and I’m so aware of the privilege my wife and I have had – both in being able to conceive and as parents in general. We are incredibly lucky.

More than my medical experience shaping how I parent, I believe becoming a dad has made me a better doctor – especially when it comes to understanding parents who bring their children to A&E at 2am. I now see firsthand how rational thinking flies out the window when it’s your own child.

When my wife notices something concerning in the middle of the night, I have to consciously shift into “doctor mode” and approach the situation as if I were treating someone else’s baby in A&E. I’ll take his temperature, listen to his chest, and check his heart rate. Then I’ll calmly explain to her, in Dr Rupy’s voice, why there’s usually no need to panic – though a little paracetamol might help.

This week I have been…

Reading… As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. It’s the sort of original self help-stoic book written in 1903, amounting to something like 70-odd pages. It’s a beautiful read, a companion to this process I’m going through. It’s about training your thoughts to be positive and reframing any negative situation in order to manifest everything in your life. I’m trying to put that into action as much as possible to counteract feelings of exhaustion.

Cooking… broth – pretty much every single week. It’s winter season, we’re trying to stave away coughs and colds, and above all else my wife is recovering from a C-section. Protein is also critical for breastfeeding women and those recovering from major surgery, so we often cook with tempeh, tofu and lean meat. 

We’ve been making a very simple recipe – chicken or beef bones in cold water, gradually bringing the temperature up and simmering on a low heat for three or four hours. I flavour mine with Asian ingredients – clove, star anise, lemongrass, garlic, turmeric and ginger – which are good for inflammation and key ingredients in Chinese and ayurvedic medicine. 

Listening… to right-wing podcasts, particularly American ones like the All-In podcast. I’m naturally left-centrist but I’m trying to hear perspectives different from mine – in this case rich Americans talking about macroeconomics. 

It might sound odd, but I’m really intrigued by how we got to the place where right-wing governments are so popular. It’s a really good exercise to generate a more holistic understanding of the world. Otherwise we sit in our own little bubbles – which is why people don’t understand Brexit or the gripes around immigration. As a British-Asian I feel a responsibility to understand people better rather than just branding everyone as “racist”, which is lazy. I want to truly understand where these ideas stem from.

Dr Rupy Aujla’s new book, Healthy High Protein, is out 13 March