Since moving to Sweden, one of the things I had the hardest time adjusting to is the low availability/limited variety of products available in the market. Sweden isn't a small country in size, but it is very sparsely populated. The stores here simply can't stock the variety of products found elsewhere. Even rural South Korea (I literally lived amongst the rice paddies for a year) had more variety than what's considered a large city in Sweden. It was shocking!

Now 3 years later and I'm still shocked! For instance, why is it that no one carries baby formula for milk allergies when they apparently have a high percentage of babies with milk allergies? I'm not talking about grocery stores --- they don't even carry it. I'm talking about pharmacies, the only place that's supposed to carry it!

So here I am, yet again waiting to see if the pharmacy in the largest hospital in the county carries a product that I can buy at Wal-Mart and Amazon.com back home. And if they don't carry it, we have to find out how long it'll take for them to order it because having my mom buy it from the neighborhood Wal-Mart and shipping it here might actually be faster!

And all the while my little girl is itching her face off and crying And BTW, hydrocortizone 1% can only be given by prescription here and I had to convince the doctor to give it for her body. Sob.