When you are pregnant, you need to do several things to make sure that you are ready when your baby is born. One of the things that you should do that you might not think about is finding a pediatrician. If you have a pediatrician all lined up before your baby is born, they will be able to come to the hospital and check out your baby before you go home from the hospital. Having a pediatrician already lined up will also help you if something goes wrong at birth or your child has an issue, because the pediatrician can be part of any care team that is making decisions about what needs to happen. So, how do you go about finding the right pediatrician for you?

Coverage

One thing that you can do to help find the right pediatrician for you and your baby is to check on what kind of coverage your pediatrician has for after-hours emergencies as well as for times that they are out of the office. If your pediatrician is part of a larger practice, this won't be as big a question as it would be if they were in a solo practice, because a larger practice is always going to have plenty of doctors on staff to cover emergencies. 

Age Range

You should also find out what age range the pediatrician covers. While many pediatricians will cover kids up until the age of 18, some pediatricians prefer to stop seeing children before that. If you ask about what age range the doctor prefers to treat, you can make plans for the future. You may also choose to go with a different doctor who covers a different range of ages. 

Specialty

While pediatric medicine is a specialty on its own, it also has sub-specialties. If you are concerned about something, then you might want to see if you can find a doctor who covers that sub-specialty as well as pediatric medicine. You might want to wait on this one for a while, depending on your child and any health issues that they might have as they get older. 

When you are pregnant, there are a lot of things that you need to do. One of them is to work on finding a pediatrician so that you can have a doctor ready to go when your child is born. 

Call a pediatrician in your area to make an appointment.