Talk:Pain in babies

Article Checklist for "Pain in babies"

Workgroup category or categories	Health Sciences Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developed article: complete or nearly so
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Christo Muller (Talk) 19:02, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

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This initial article is heavily modified from a lecture, so that it would be easy to get into too much detail. It bothers me that there are so many headings and subheadings, at his stage, and one would have to watch out for ending up with more references than article body. --Christo Muller (Talk) 02:18, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

As the father of a 10-month-old baby who can say "mama" and "papa" and a lot of babble, I can attest that babies can feel pain.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting article--engagingly written too. --Larry Sanger 08:51, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Possible improvements

It is difficult for me to distance myself, and keep the tone of the article consistent. We need someone who is not involved with the subject to assess that, I think. The medication section I've purposefully kept vague and non-informative (don't treat your own child as per Citizendium), so the molly-coddling bit is maybe too long (you may treat as per Citizendium). I would like to get illustrations of a baby's face in pain and relaxed; maybe a tube of EMLA; a baby in neonatal ICU; a picture of a baby with a great big IV cannula would make a point. Maybe an illustration of swaddling. Ah well, infantile colic should be up in the next few days and/or pain in toddlers children and adolescents. Causes for pain in babies comes up in the colic article, but I wonder if one should list them here? One thing, no other encyclopedia has a single descent article on any of these. Christo Muller (Talk) 19:02, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

If you don't object, Christo, I'll go through and edit and see what I can come up with in terms of keeping the ideas but transforming this into more of an article and less of a conversational lecture. If I mess up-just tell me. You are welcome to change things back. I would likely start out-Do babies feel pain? Let me know, please. Nancy Sculerati 19:28, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I read it again, and I like it a lot, not sure where or how I can help you. Maybe I will do some reading,and then I'll know better. Thinking about the issue, rather than the article, in the past I approached this problem more pragmatically (by titrating the morphine myself while doing such things as bedside bronchoscopy rather than argue the point on an academic basis and wait for individual inadequate doses to finally arrive ("who's got the keys?"). It's time I learned the academic basis for both sides of this argument, rather than just know- because I feel that pain too. (How can you not? That's what I still don't understand, not really)). You've got me thinking back and remembering, some things I'd rather forget. Even with the "Riley-Day" (Dysautonomic) kids- there was fear, and that meant bronchospasm and hypertension (in spades), and feeling that terror with them. I was fortuneate to work with some wonderfully kind and gentle anesthesiologists, and learned early on the absolute necesity of doing whatever it took to get them. Back to fear-I wonder if that's how the argument that babies don't feel pain started- that they don't anticipate fearfully, because they don't understand. Or that there is amnesia, so somehow, it doesn't matter. Like the argument that with scopolomine for childbirth nothing much else was needed. (thank god I missed that era, both as a physician and a birthing mother). Anyway, I need to read to understand better why the argument against analgesia was ever made. Nancy Sculerati 22:16, 3 April 2007 (CDT)