It worked, because here we are. What has changed is not the love of mothers. They also passed the word, shared remedies and advice among themselves. But the health of your children deserves more than just a search. That's when the mom chat appears. In which emergency services are saturated and the appointment with the primary care pediatrician sometimes takes longer than an anxious mother can wait. Our mothers, our aunts, the women who raised us, also sought answers. Some alarmed you more than you were. This does not make you a bad mother. You can see the child, listen to his breathing, feel his abdomen, look into his eyes. Someone who says: “my child had the same thing, I used this and it worked, calm down, it will pass”. No algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can replace the look of a doctor who knows your child, who listens to you and who is truly present. Although about that, precisely, I will write next week. The author is a pediatrician. They do it because they want to understand, because they want to come prepared, because deep down they hope that someone, even if it's a screen, will confirm that their child is okay. And when Google gives them an answer that doesn't quite convince them, that clashes with that instinct that no algorithm can replace, they look for something else: they look for someone who understands them. It is something older and more necessary than that: it is validation, it is company, it is the certainty that you are not alone at two in the morning with a racing heart. There are those who look at this with a certain nostalgia and say: before you asked the grandmother. They are doing exactly what any mother who loves her child and wants to protect her with the tools at hand would do. The instinct that leads them to search, to ask, not to stay still, that instinct is good. It is not medical information. Today's mothers do not go to Google first because they distrust doctors. The thread of messages with the moms in the classroom. It deserves time, presence and a trained gaze that looks you in the eye and tells you: it's okay or you have to act. And that, still, no app does. It is not the first time, but something in your instinct tonight tells you to pay attention. It makes you a 21st century mother. We live in an era where information is a click away, but medical appointments can be weeks away. It's two in the morning. The words come out on their own: fever in children, when to worry. They did it with the tools they had: lived experience, inherited wisdom, the trusted neighbor. Before waking anyone up, even before calling anyone, you open your phone and type into Google. A grandmother could be wrong, of course. In seconds, you have ten answers. And they are right, in part. But rarely did she send you to an internet forum where wise advice and dangerous misinformation coexisted with the same tone of authority. To all the mothers who have googled symptoms in the middle of the night, who have asked in the chat before calling the doctor, who have doubted whether to take the child to the emergency room or wait to see how the dawn breaks: you are doing nothing wrong. They did it as they could, with what they knew, with all the love they had. You have to listen to it. But there is something that no Google search, no mom chat, no WhatsApp message can replace: the in-person consultation with the pediatrician. The group of childhood friends. You can speak calmly, without character limits or heart emojis. Some reassure you. Not because doctors have all the answers, but because in that consultation things happen that do not fit on a screen. What has changed is the volume of information available, the speed at which it circulates and the difficulty of knowing what is reliable and what is not. Your child has a fever. It can be recommended with all the information on the table, not with the three symptoms that were conveyed in a voice message. Technology is a powerful tool. Not because we doctors have all the answers, but because in that consultation things happen that do not fit on a screen. What has changed is the volume of information, the speed of its circulation and the difficulty of knowing what is reliable and what is not. Your child is sick. It does not make you a bad mother. They did it as well as they could. With love. They did not do it better or worse.
