A Question About Midnight's Children

I’ve never read Rushdie before. But, now that he’s newly single, I thought I might start checking up on his works. You know, in case I ever run into him in a hotel elevator or something.

Anyway. I am seriously looking for an answer to this question. In the chapter “Under the Carpet,” when Mumtaz has pneumonia, why does Doctor Aziz give her a gynecological exam? The next step of the plot hinges on this exam, but it seems unnaturally placed into the narrative. Pneumonia usually only troubles the top half of the body, after all. And, since Rushdie is a good writer, it must mean that there’s something going on here that I don’t understand.

(I’m the sort of person who will go back and pick apart a book to put together its components. In Sacred Games, for example, I spent nearly half an hour trying to solve the gold bar problem. To wit: on page 50, Ganesh takes two gold bars out of his sack. On pages 59/60, he gives two gold bars to Paritosh Shah, but Badriya notices the third gold bar he has kept hidden. Where did this third bar come from? I finally found it on page 39: the bar he originally slipped into his pocket when he divided the gold with Mathu.)

So. Can anyone help me with this Midnight’s Children thing? Or do I just accept that the story is a story, and I should follow the events as Saleem tells them, without worrying too much about the details? ^__^