Doctor Appts and Mom Guilt

As you know, we haven't been taking the kids out much. Oliver went in his first building a few months ago to get his Covid shot. And then he went in his second building several weeks after that to get his second Covid shot. Meaning that the only times that he had been out in public was to go get these injections. Which is pretty shitty. 

But then, I scheduled his appointment with the pediatrician, and they did that blood prick to test for iron, which was not expected and very upsetting to him. Though he did well with the two Covid shots with Richard, he completely freaked out about the blood prick, and he's constantly asking me every time I make any kind of appointment, if they're going to use a needle or put a hole in him. Which is devastating. Because obviously Penny has major injection anxiety, but I was really hoping that Oliver wouldn't as well.

The next place we went was to the ENT. They did that hearing test that he hated, he found the whole appointment very boring, we came home.

Then after that, we went to the allergist. They did a skin test, which he initially freaked out about, but he did OK. Again, poking him. Again, he was upset. I had to hold him tight and let him watch videos to get through it.  

So that's what? The 5th public experience in 3 months, all appointments. Poked and prodded at 4/5. 

The skin test went OK, and she said we should be able to test out baked egg, but we wanted to go ahead and get blood work done first. The fresh egg skin test was a lot more iffy, indicating that he may still be allergic to scrambled eggs.

So, as you might've guessed, now I need to schedule him to go get bloodwork.

And I am just feeling like such a shitty human being right now. Because I don't want him out in public, but I will make the exception for all the stuff we need to catch up on. Which means that all of his experiences are terrible. And every time we go into a building he's getting poked or prodded. We did take them to the drive-through zoo today, it's not like we're not doing other fun things, but when it comes to going inside of a building, or going to a doctor, we have yet to have a fully positive experience.

We go back to the anti next week so that he can repeat the hearing test that he hated. Then after that, we have to go to the dentist, and I have no idea how that's going to go. And I'm sure that they're gonna tell me that this extra tooth has to be removed, so that's going to be an entirely other total fucking meltdown for him and ME.

This is not even to mention the flu shot that they haven't had, or the vaccines that he needs to catch up on, none of which he has had since 2019.

What am I doing??? What kind of trauma am I causing by putting him through all of this when he hasn't even had like a positive public experience yet? Is he gonna be terrified of doctors for the rest of his life because he went to like eight of them in the span of two months and every experience was borderline shitty?

I feel like such a terrible mom. I feel like I'm tormenting him. I know he would be excited to be able to eat baked egg, but at this point I'm just wondering if any of this is worth it. Maybe I should've spread it out and done it over the next year… Maybe I shouldn't of done it all until we were having some kind of positive experiences. Nothing feels right, and everything just feels so depressing with the way the last almost 3 years have been.