Latest / Mom Wars / Picking the Brain of a Pediatrician

Transcript

Picking the Brain of a Pediatrician · Mom Wars

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: From the front lines of the Mom Wars. Here's Bethany
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Hello, good evening, good morning whenever you're listening to this,
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the third official episode of the mom Wars
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: podcast and our first podcast with a guest. Welcome. Okay,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: So my name is Bethany Mandel. I am the American host,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: and you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Are Maria Kennedy, and I am welch.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Really, yeah, you didn't I have I think I might
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: have known that. I don't really know what Wales is.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: And our first guest, please introduce yourself, even though I
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: just asked you for the pronunciation of your name and
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: now I'm chickening out.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: Ali Karen. I'm from Columbus, Ohio. I'm a pediatrician here.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on the show. We
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: connected because I think you're a listener of Hugh Hewitt,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah? And I heard you were going to do mom Wars,
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: so I listened the first time and I thought, oh,
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: this is so in my jib, like this is my
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: world every day.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: So I got you on the phone, which sometimes I
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: do to people. I don't advertise that much, but sometimes
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I just like to get people on the phone and
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: just chat with them. I actually found my book assistant
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: that way. She sent me this brilliant DM on Twitter
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: and I was like, I want to talk to you
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: on the phone.
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: It's very millennial of you because I'm jen Zy and
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: I don't call anybody on the phone ever.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: If it can be avoided, I'm not calling you.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: So wait a couple when you have no hands anymore.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I used to be like that, and now I'm like,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I have to talk to people on the phone or
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I'm never going to talk to you.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: I get really annoyed with my kids because they text
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: me and I'll be like driving and I call them
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: back and they'll silence me and say, can't you text No,
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: I'm driving.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: No no.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And the same thing with voice memos. People really hate
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: voice memos. But I'm like, sorry, I have to you already, Carr,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you do the voice memos, You're already halfway there.
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: So my cousin, who is like fourteen, they've started doing
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: like like younger gen Z, they've started doing like blogs to.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: Contact you, like voice memos, the video.
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: And it's so joint and every time she's really, I'm
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: not listening to this, just text me.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So one of my best friends, Lindsay Fifield, who I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: used to have a podcast with, will send like three
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: to seven minute long voice memos.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no way, and I can't. Yeah, I'm talking about
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: after fifty eight times. It's a joke.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: It's a joke in our in our friend group because
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: we're like, so do you guys get a seven minute
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: voice memo from Lindsay And she doesn't send the same one.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It's like different seven minute long voice memos.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Don't know which is better. I mean, I have I
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: have a friend who voiced to text you, but they're
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: like novels you get when you're like oh and.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: You're like, no punctuation.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I do a novel. I do a lot of voice
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: to text. One of my best friends she does voice
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: to text, but it doesn't understand her and so she
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: will text things. So the holiday of Perham is coming up,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: and so content warning for any parents that are listening
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: around your children. Fast forward for the next minute. So
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the Jewish holiday Peram is coming up, and the disgusting
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: cookie that we make is called homon Tashin. But she
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: voiced to texted and asked if we wanted to come
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: over and bake commentashin, but it's sent out. Do you
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: want to horny pushin tushy, horny tushy? Do you want
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: to come over and make corny tushy? That was it.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: I love it. I just love it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And we have a couples group chat between me and
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Seth and them and the screenshot of it, and that's
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the image of our of our group text. Now do
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: you want to come over and make horny tushy?
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work, but anyway, anyway,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So the whole point of this sub stac and podcast
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: was a different way to talk about motherhood and parenting
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: because it's become this like anxious, fraud, unpleasant experience. And
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: we talked, and we shouldn't have talked for as long
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: as we did. We should have saved it for the podcast.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: When I realized how much I liked you, I should
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: have hung up on you right away and be like,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: let's sell.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: We can do it all again.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: We can do it all again. And Carra hasn't heard
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: it yet. Tell me a little bit about your experience.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So you're practicing, first of all, explain to us what
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: you are and your practice, because we don't totally understand it,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and then let's launch into what you're witnessing.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think that I'm a unicorn when
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: it comes to you know, a medical professional for sure.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: On board sort of fed in pediatrics, so you know,
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: I did those hundred hours in the ICU and pediatric
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: ers and awful things that just you know, bad memories
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: because I was before the like work hour restrictions, so
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: I really did work terrible hours. And so I'm boarded
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: in pediatrics. But I'm also board certified in astheopathic manipulative medicine,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: which is a do specialty that just does manual medicine,
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: and I got into that. Yeah, yeah, so no, I
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: think that's important. So if you're listening in the UK,
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: asthopathic physicians are not fully licensed doctors, so if you're
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: listening in the US, kind of like chiropractors and if
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: but in the US, doos are equally licensed with mds,
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: and so we go through the same four years of
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: undergraduate although we also have a holistic medicine course. I
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: oftentimes say it's like parochial school. You have all the
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: same academics and then you have this extra class and
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: then we do our resonancies in my case pediatrics, and
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: so we're still and like there's deos that do neurosurgery
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: and cardiology and all the things in America, which is
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: really different for the UK audience, and so for me,
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: I then also did I also got boarded in astopathic
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: treatments because actually that's how I ended up being a doctor.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: When I was young, I was an athlete and my
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: mom was a total hippie. She dragged me to all
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: sorts of different things, but one time she dragged me
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: to an osteopath and I found him to be quite
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: helpful because I was a runner on the national championship
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: cross country team and we got hurt all the time,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: and the doctors had no good answers for overuse injuries
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: in an young athlete. But he was awesome, and as
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: long as he treated me, I kept running, which was
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: nice because I stayed on varsity of this really cool team.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: So I liked him. I decided I was going to
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: go off and go to DOO school. And then while
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: in my training, I realized I wanted to do it
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: in pediatrics. So when I got done, I had these
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: two experiences. I had a mentor in this manual medicine field,
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: and he never interacted with mainstream medicine. He only did
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: manual medicine. And then I had my mentor in pediatrics,
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: and he actually was a super cool dude. He had
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: trained with my father in law, ironically, and both of
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: them had this really strong sense of like the patient
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: was your responsibility, which I think has been lost a lot,
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: and that you were the keeper of their medical care
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: and you were supposed to be dedicated to that. And
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: so in my training with him, we took care of
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: all these very complicated kids that he took ownership of
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: and felt really strongly about, and I got more and
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: more comfortable with complicated kids. And then as I started
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: go out and practice, I realized that, like so many times,
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: parents feel like they have to pick between the advice
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: of their mainstream medical doctor who makes fun of and
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: mocks the person who wants to talk to them about
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: diet or vitamins or manual medicine or whatever, or the
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: manual medicine person or the chiropractor or the homeopath or
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: whatever who thinks that all mattern medicine is evil and
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: terrible and you should never talk to a doctor. And
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: I was watching these parents try to navigate this as
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: in my training, and I was like, this is just
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: so unfair to everyone and not even true. I mean,
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: modern medicine is amazing and I like it when I
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: need it. If you need to go to the pediatric hospital,
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: you should go. But there's a lot of things that
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: it doesn't address, and there's a lot of gaps in care,
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: particularly for children with complex cares, and so you know,
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: we only know so much about how to make a
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: down child or an autism child be their best selves.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: And I think that a lot of times diet, nutrition
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: and manual medicine things like that can kind of support
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: families in ways that are safe and reasonable. And I
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: always use the kind of criteria do I know it's safe,
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: like first, do no harm? Is it financially reasonable? Like
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: resource wise for the family? Have you told them you know,
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: like this isn't typical, but you have this option. Like
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: I always am like, we could do this, or we
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: could do this. A lot of times my families will
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: say they like having choices, and that's just really rare.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: So after a while I decided, I was like I
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: was starting to get busy and I was either going
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: to have to stop taking new patients or something. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: I certainly wasn't going to hire another doctor because I
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: was going to have to teach them all these and
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I wasn't sure that was going to happen. So instead
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: I hired a whole bunch of nurse practitioners and trained them,
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: and now we work as a cohesive team delivering that care.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: So we have full spectrum, We have well checked sick visits,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: we have complex care. We have kids that a lot
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: of psych kids that come for psych meds that are
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: combined with medicine and vitamins and everything. And I feel
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: like I've kind of created my little like haven over
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: here in pediatric care. I love what I do, but
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: it's private practice. And you know, I have a lot
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: of things to say about our healthcare system, but I'll
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: say those for another day. And so that's what we do.
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: We have a really wide range of families, you know.
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: So we have quorthdax families, we have homeschool rural families.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: We have anti vaxer, you know, anti government kind of families.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: We also are down this street from Ohio State University,
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: and one of our biggest payers is the faculty there,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: and so we have researchers who do bioscience and vaccine
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: research and all those kind of things in the office too,
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: And it's just great because I think people want to
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: have deeper conversations about their care and we're willing to
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: do that with them, and so I end up with
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: a very wide, diverse group of people that I serve,
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: which is also really really refreshing.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: So you might have already said this, but I'm just
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: wondering how long you've been doing this specific type of care.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: Well, I started training twenty five years ago. I opened
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: my practice. Well, no, gosh, no, I opened my practice
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: twenty three years ago. And so yeah, and I've.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Always amazing because you look like you're thirty.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: So thank you, thank you.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, I you might be one of those like liars
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: who have like this really complex backstory.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: Or maybe I'm just really good at wellness. No, I
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: also have good genetics. My mother also looks very young.
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: So I think I could take credit for my great
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: diet and wellness based care, or I could just say
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: and I have good geens.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's probably it. Probably. So one thing that really
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: resonated with me with what you were talking about was
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: so I love my pediatrician, and I don't think I
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: suspect he might know what I do and stumble upon this,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: but I deeply love him. One of the things, they're
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: totally like normative care, Like what you're describing doesn't exist
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: where I live, unless it does, in which case please
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: contact me Montgomery County, Maryland. No, I don't think it does.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: We're pretty rare.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that I really love about
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: my practice is that they do that ownership thing. Like,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: you know, six kids over the course of you know,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: five or six years that we've been going there, we've
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: had some like weird stuff Like there was like this
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: weird staff infection that my daughter had that like took
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: over her whole face that they almost admitted her to
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Children's for, And they were calling us every hour when
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: we were in the emergency room. They were calling the
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: emergen's room telling us telling them to get her out
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: of the waiting room. Like they really do that ownership
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: thing really really well.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: Where are these days?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And we had another kid who had who
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: had something going on over the course of like a week,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And I think what they do is at the end
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: of the day, they huddle and say these are the
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: things that are currently percolating among because whenever I whenever
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I would call and say I'm calling for this kid,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: They're like, oh yeah, and everyone knew immediately what I
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: was talking about. So I think that there's like that
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: communication that happens, which is really nice. But one of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: the things that I appreciate is that they talk to
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: us like we're adults and they give us options. And
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: it was interesting because that kid who had that freak
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: staff infection when she was in the hospital and they
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: were talking about if they were going to admit her
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: or send her back to us. My pediatrician told me
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: afterwards that they wanted to admit her, but the pediatrician said, no,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: these are responsible parents who will administer on time these antibiotics.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Because they gave us a shopping bag that was like
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: a Trader Goes bag full of antibiotics. It was nuts.
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: You have to know your families, you really.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is kind of my question. So the
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: things that I've heard from pediatrician friends, like someone told
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: me that one of the most common things she sees
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: in a pediatric er is toddlers who come in high
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: from THHC gummies. Yeah, and I.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: Think very lucky.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I don't see that very often really, So this is
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: like the thing that kind of has opened my eyes
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: in parenting of like how not great A lot of
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: parents are, like I think that there's there's all of
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: us who are overthinking it, and I want to talk
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: about that because those are the people who are listening.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Let's just be real. But then there's that other subset
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: that are like really terrible.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it's important to mention that because one
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: of the things that is not known by a lot
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: of people is that when we create standard of care,
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: which by the way, is like different in each city,
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: you may not know that malpractice is defined by whether
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: you deviated from the standard of care, which is not
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: whether you caused a child harm, but whether you did
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: something that your peers wouldn't have done, which of course
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: always puts me in like this quandary because I do
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: think sometimes that my peers don't do but it is
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: is did you deviate? And what a lot of people
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: don't realize is that standard of care is actually designed
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: for the worst common denominator of a parent.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so my experience so.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: Much, and so the pediatricians, most of them are like well,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: this is the way we're supposed to do it. I'm like, well,
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: you're supposed to do that because you don't know if
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: they'll come back, and you don't know, you know, like
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: a lot of the decisions we make are based on.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Like worst case scenarios.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I trained in rural Appalachia area for a
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: good part of my training. We had to spend three
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: months down in Appalachia and that was a really different experience.
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: It was really good because you know, if if you
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: don't have a car and you live in a trailer
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: that's down a county road in a mountain, if the
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: vaccine truck comes through town and like stops at your house,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: they're going to give you all the vaccines that could
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: possibly give you in one day because they may not
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: see that kid again. And and so like a lot
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: of times we're having these like deeper conversations about healthcare.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: You have to understand that a lot of our criteria
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: are built for efficient, quick care for parents who may
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: not ever follow up for whatever reason they do, whether
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: they're actually bad parents or they just have lack of access.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: But I take care of such a highly educated group
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: of people. They are so kind. Yeah, so like if
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: come in and I say, well, we could do this
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: or we could do that, but I need to follow
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: you back up in two days if we choose this, Like,
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: you know, we don't have to give your kid antibiotics
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: for these ear infections today, but I want to look
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: in there in a couple of days and make sure
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: they go away. Say they're totally going to come back.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't have that problem. And so but
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: if you're sitting in the er or a typical pediatric
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: practice and you don't know when you're going to see
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: this kid again or if you're going to see this
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: kid again, it's a totally different kind of care. Yeah,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: And so I wish my pediatric peers actually would own
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: that and recognize that they don't have to do the
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: same thing for you know, faculty at a university as
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: they do for rural appalasia. Like you can amend guidelines
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: and do things differently depending on which family you're talking to.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: But that's that's that's not what is happening. I had
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: a conversation once with Children's and they will not call
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: it out celiac until they have a biopsy positive like
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: bleeding bowel. Right, Well, there's a lot of kids who
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: will have symptoms long before that, they have family histories
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: of it whatever. And they said, well, we can't even
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: get people to carry an appropriate gluten free diet when
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: they actually are Celiac. I'm like, no, no, no, Like
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: I have families that are like mom Celiac, brother Celiac,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: We're just raising the right way. And I'm like, right, like,
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: I don't. I don't have that kind of problem in
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: my practice. So anyway, it happens a lot.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's March, and you know what that means, madness? Right, Well,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: if you're into basketball, gray scraping wind, if you live
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: in my part of the country, or green Aaron Gobrush, Leily,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: et cetera. If you're of the Irish persuasion or want
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: to be Irish, what March is is thirty one days,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: though it's a long time. And the great thing is
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: if you sign up for ricochet dot com, well you
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: get you get thirty one days of the month. That's it.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: What do you get when you sign up so, well,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: you get access to the same civil center, right conversation
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: you've been looking for all your days on the internet.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can read the main page for free,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: but for the cost of you know, I don't know,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: for the cost of a couple of cups of coffee
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. You get a community and
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the member feed that you'll wonder why you didn't sign
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: up years ago. Ricochet dot com make that your March
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: resolution if you have any, and go there now.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Whenever I talk about my pediatrician, I'm like, I love them,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: or if I talk about a pediatrician, I make clear
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not talking about my pediatrician who I adore.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: How do you recommend parents navigate that reality?
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think and I experienced this when I was
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: pregnant because I was dealing with people who treated me
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: like I was an idiot. My first practice is and
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: how high? How do you recognize that someone is doing that?
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: And how do you navigate it? Do you have any recommendations?
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: Okay, well, I think the one thing that I would
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: say is know who you're dealing with. One of the
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: big mistakes. I guess for me, what frustrates me is
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: I really respect my specialty practices. You know, if I
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: have a kid who needs a genetic workout, like please
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: go see genetics tell me what weird thing that's going
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: on with you that I can't figure out. Or I
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: have a kid who goes through open heart surgery and
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: I'm working on the mass neopathically right now to like
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: get the blood flow back to their extremities right and
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: get their BARA receptors back in line and everything like that,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: But like, I need the cardiologists to manage the blood
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: pressure medications and do their fancy little measurements and make
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: sure the kid is safe right like I can. I
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: can do nice things, but I need them to do
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: the fancy things. One of the things that kind of
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: frustrates me as I navigate that system is that if
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: the families are like, oh, yeah, we see doctor Green. Now,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: it's better now. I mean, I've been here long enough
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: that doesn't happen now. But for a long time it
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, you know, don't take those vitamins or
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: don't don't, don't, don't, don't do sthopathic medicine whatever, you know,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: and they'd make all these comments, and I was like,
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: you know, can't you think stay in your lane and
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: just like do the thing I need you for because
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: the cardiologist isn't going to tell the udercronologists what to do,
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: and I don't tell you what to do, So that
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: frustrates me. And so then when my families go to
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: the hospital, a lot of times I'm like, Okay, so
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: we're going to the hospital today to see if you
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: have a septic knee. This is what we're going to
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: talk to them about. But we're not going to talk
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: to them about all these other things that you talk
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: to me about, you know, because sometimes it'll derail the
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: entire visit and the thing I sent them there for
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: doesn't get addressed because mom asks them what they think
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: aboutiler vitamins or whatever. And you need to be like, Okay,
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: I'm here for septic knee today. I'm not here to
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: talk about vitamins. I'm not here to talk about vaccines.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: I'm not here to I can talk to doctor Green
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: about those things. And so I think that's my biggest
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: piece of advice is like know who you're talking to,
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: who you're getting your vice from, and then stay siloed
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: in the thing that that person does. Does that make sense, Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: That's interesting, But the problem is with that sometimes is
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: particularly for like working parents with a lot of kids,
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: is that sometimes you only have time for one appointment,
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: you know, And I feel like it must be difficult.
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: For people to choose to do two types of medicine
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: side by side, because sometimes you might only have one
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: time have time for one, you know.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: Do you find that with well, I'm just talking about
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: primary care versus specialty care, Like if you if you're
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: in if you're in a situation where you're there for
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: something like know the person you're talking to as far
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: as but you're right, it's very difficult to manage that,
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: which is why I like my practice. But there aren't
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: very many of us.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: One thing that I piggybacking off of what you just said.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: One frustration that I had with my last pediatrician was
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: that they tried to give me parenting advice. And one
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: of them was like an elderly German Man who was fantastic,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: but he was seventy five and very German, and so
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: he would give me unsolicited advice, like and it got
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: to the point where I just didn't listen to anything
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: he said, and it delegitimized so much of what he
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: was telling me because I was like, that's obviously not true.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So he was telling me when my first was a
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: baby that at four months old, I should be stuffing
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: her with oatmeal to make her sleep. And I was like,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: but that contradicts the American Academy Pediatric Like this was
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: before I This was when I thought that the American
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Academy Pediatrics was a good place. Now I know they're
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: the bad people, but sometimes when I told you either,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: when I still trusted them, I was like, that contradicts
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the American Academy of Pediatrics. Actually, but I still disagree
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: with that now being red pilled, but I just I
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: started ignoring the things that I didn't care about, and so,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: like I've been lectured more times than I can possibly
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: think of. We talked about this in the first podcast,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Safe Sleep, because I I co sleep with my babies,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: and so my kids would narc on me because everyone
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: would always ask, so, where does their baby sleep? And
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: I look at my kids. My older kids really shut up.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Don't tell them, and some of them didn't get it,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and so I was like, well, you know, they various
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: places in the home, as you do when you're a baby,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: and just tried to keep it very big. But I
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: and my current pediatrician were like, yes, they do sleep
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: various places. But my last pediatrician did not play with
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: that game.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: So I think it's a personality thing with pediatricians as well.
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: Like when my baby got diagnosed with reflex, it took
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: a couple of pediatricians to tell us something other than oh,
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: hold them up after they eat in for thirty minutes.
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: And I would be like, I'm holding her up for
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: an hour, like this is not working. And then I
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: took her to like a third pediatrician and she was like, oh, yeah,
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: my baby had reflex.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Like I get where you're coming from. This is what
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: you need to do.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: So I think that I think that parents and I
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: want to segue. I want to segue into our next
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: sort of conversation. But I my my piece of advice
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: to parents is to just in your head tell people
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: to stay in their lane and they don't have you
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: don't have to say it out loud. But I never
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: took a lot, like a lot of the advice that
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I've gotten from people who are not experts in the
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: thing they're giving me advice on. I would just sort
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: of like nod and be like, Okay, I will definitely
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I will put that baby to sleep in a a
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: in a totally different part of my house. Don't worry
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: about it. Let's take a break right now, and then
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I want to I want to segue into the next
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: segment with sort of the other side, Yes, the other
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: side of the coin.
• 25:36
  Speaker 7: I'm Greg Corumbas. Join Jim Garrity of National Review and
• 25:40
  Speaker 7: me each weekday for the Three Martini Lunch Podcast. We'll
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: give you the good, bad, and crazy news of the
• 25:45
  Speaker 7: day and lots of laughs too. Find us right here
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: on the Ricochet Audio Network at ricochet dot com or
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: wherever you get your podcasts.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Obviously, the people who are listening to the show are
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: not the parents who don't come back to the pediatrician
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: two days later. They are the parents who are overthinking it,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: which is why they're listening to a podcast about moms.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: So I think the thing that we jiveed on the
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: most was sort of the whole operating thesis of why
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: we started mom Wars was the state of motherhood discourse.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: And I yeah, so I want to hear a little
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: bit because my pediatrician friends tell me the craziest stories.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Like one of them, let me just I was standing
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: outside my pediatrician's office and a friend this was like
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: during COVID or like into tail end of COVID, and
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: I was there because somebody had something like the flu
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: or something. It was a Saturday, and I'm an Orthodox show,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: so standing outside and they only let you know one
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: patient and at a time, because it's it's a it's
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: a weekend. It's literally just the doctor who's in the office,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and so she opens the door, let someone in, does
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: their thing, and then opens the door for the next person,
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: and it's like a line kind of. And so it's
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: a Saturday, and I see one of my Orthodox Jewish
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: neighbors outside and I was like, what are you doing here?
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Like what could be wrong with your kid that you're
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: here on a Saturday too? And he said, my wife
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: thinks that our child has monkey pucks and he couldn't
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: even say it without laughing. And he was like, so
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: she told me to break Shabbat and bring our child
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: here to get God for monkey bucks on a Saturday.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm crying and I couldn't, I couldn't
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: hold in my laughter in him. And I was like, oh,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: are they okay? Are you going to a lot of
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: gay where she's in? And she was like or he
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: was like yeah, I just I just kind of went
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: and I brought the kid and here I am. And
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: I was like, and I thought to myself, why does
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: this pediatrician see like tell me, well.
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: He was following the golden rule, which is the woman
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: is always right for like the first.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: I love him. Let me just say, God, love that man.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: He loves his wife.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: That's how I would say that.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: You know, I have this dream and so like maybe
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: I shouldn't out myself this way, but I have this
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: dream that I would like to create a like tic
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: tac account where I'm an avatar and I tell stories.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: They would be like the movie The Help, you know,
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: where like nobody wants to admit they were that mother.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: Because my friends, when I tell them the stories who
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: were office, They're like, what I mean, crazy stuff?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh, there's so many bad ones. But I have
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: had multiple situations. I had one time where a mom, unfortunately,
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: she was clearly having This is the part that's hard
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: for me is that like the moms are clearly not right,
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: like like she was clearly in postpartum like anxiety or
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: flat out like I don't know, but bad. And she
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: had had masditis and she got obsessed about it, and
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: so she was like in my office and she had
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: her shirt off, going, can't you see it still?
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: There?
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Can't you still? It was fine? It was fine. And
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: then she was sure the baby was gonna die of
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: her mersa mass titis. And so I did what I
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: always do, which is I like focused on the baby
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: and told her all the things that were amazing about
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: her baby, that it was growing great, and look how
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: much she smiles, and like I went through her physical
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: exam at how absolutely perfect her baby was. I said,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: I am not worried about this baby at all, which
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: is usually how I handle it, Like I'm just gonna
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: tell you why your baby's amazing. And she looked at me,
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: and she goes, well, of course you think that because
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: you don't care if they die. I was like, oh
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: and I and the st I looked at I was like, well,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, I care if they die because I don't
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: want them to die. But I also care because I
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: have a medical license and I can't be wrong a
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: big deal, like I can't be wrong about whether your
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: baby's gonna die. And it was like all I could
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: do to hold it in. And I mean I was
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: like I can't even be mad at this woman.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: I wait, can a baby die of mais?
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: No?
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: This name was fun, This day was totally fine. But
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: she in her mind, like some people die of MRSA sepsis.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: They said, I have MRSA in my mess titis. My
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: baby's gonna eat the milk, get MERSA die. She just
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: had it all in her mind right, and we had
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: already had multiple appointments about it. And so I leave
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: the room and as the door is shutting, I heard
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: her husband go.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: What the hell is wrong with you?
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: Yelling got her like you can't dart to not to
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: cry that way, and he's like just going off. And
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: we have had so many moments where moms are so
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: overwhelmed and just so flabbergasted with the process of being
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: a mom, and I can't even be mad at them.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: But like some sometimes they get a little nuts.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Outside of one of our offices, are they like they
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: have a sign about like not yelling at the medical staff.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Does that happen? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: One of the most fanatic stories was I had a
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: woman and she I don't like to say people are
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: bad mothers, but she was kind of mean to her kids.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: She was very nice, and she had seen a psychologist
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: who told her that they needed a genetic test because
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: they'd been diagnosed with autism. But they were really kind
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: of more like really bad ADHD, very high functioning autism.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: They were twins, and I did not think they needed
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: a genetic test, but the psychologist had told her that
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: is that like the X factor thing, like just actually
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: like genome sequence, you know, sequencing to see if they
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: have any genetic problems. And my nurse practitioner, who was
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: the most thorough nurse practitioner for sure in the practice,
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: told them that, well, we're not sure you really need it,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: but it is you know, covered, like the standard for
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: an autism kid to get it. They're really expensive sometimes
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: they're not covered by insurance. She actually like typed in
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: the note like how much it was probably going to
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: be offered them, like an outside testing company that would
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: be cheaper, and like laid it all out and actually
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: wrote like this was recommended by your psychologist and if
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: you want it, then I'll send the order. Well then,
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: of course it didn't get covered, and the mom harassed
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: us for like nine months about prior off you know,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: fighting the insurance and whatever they come into an appointment,
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: and she had clearly told the doctor she had told
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: her husband a nurse ordered an expensive test. She was
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: referring to my NP as a nurse and then implying
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: that my nurse pectitioner told her to get the test,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: which was clearly written out that she hadn't. And the
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: dad was pacing in the office yelling at me, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: I just calmly like pulled up the chart and was like, well,
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: it's right here, like you know what happened.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: We just we just went to an appointment a couple
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: of days ago and the doctor had ai note taking.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, I've actually dreamed of
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: like should I just record all my office visits for
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: how often people misquote me? And and so the dance
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: starts yelling at her again like I have had like
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: so many moments where like things go derailed in an
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: office and he's like, so you are this test, And
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: I was like, I'm the sleep out of this room,
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: you know, So I'm like leaving the room. She comes
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: out in the hall and just starts screaming at me
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: in front of everybody, insulting me, screaming like slamming doors,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: and I was like oh my god, okay, like yeah, okay,
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: bye bye.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Do you kick someone like that out of the practice?
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Like me too?
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: We tell that we need a new doctor, but we
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: don't have to do it very often. I think that.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: I think what's most important about this topic, though, is
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: that motherhood, as a biological process, is created for us
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: to be worrying about our children, and so we are
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: wired to worry and be concerned and think of them
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: first and think of all the things that might happen
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that we want to make sure don't happen. You watch
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: an animal, a mammal of any kind, and like they're
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: completely consumed with the caring of their children. So we're
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: wired to do that. And it used to be when
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: I started in my practice that like, most of the time,
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of the worries were things like I'm breastfeeding,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: my mom never breastfed, I'm super worried the baby's not
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: getting enough food. And those were like great appointments because
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: we could show them the growth chart, tell them everything
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: was great, and they would leave and well, really weird
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: now is they come in for their well check and
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: they aren't growing, and they aren't growing because they've gotten
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: some terrible breastfeeding advice, either off mom groups or actually
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: lactation consultants, and their kid is like w on the
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: growth curve and they're not doing well and they've been
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: told that it would be the most horrible thing in
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: the entire world to take formula, which is why I
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: really related to Bethany's first story. And what's really bizarre
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: to me is that we'll tell them like, hey, we're
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: kind of worried the baby's not, you know, growing great.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: Let's talk about what we might be doing feeding related,
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: and they'll just tell us we're crazy, Like you know,
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: when you say you don't listen to your doctor. Sometimes
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: they're like, you're just an anti breastfeeding like that, and
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: you're like no, no, no, no, like enough nutrients for
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: their brain and their body to like be a whole human.
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: And that feels so surreal to me. And when I
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: say we talk about this a lot, I mean we
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: probably have a few families a week that we are like, hey,
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: they're not growing great, and they won't listen to us.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: And that has been really formative to me, like noticing
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: like their voices outside of the office are so loud.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: Do you think, what'd you say.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: And it's the Internet, like social media.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: I think it's social media like googling, and like a
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: lot of moms are telling me they're like sitting up
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: at night. I'm like, God, you're already not sleeping enough,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: please to not get on the on the web.
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: But you've named like a few examples of things that
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: seem more high anxiety now. But I think that everything
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: is kind of more high anxiety. Correct, everybody is worrying
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: about everything, and every mother feels like they're not doing
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: well enough, and every Instagram video is telling you that
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: you're doing something drastically wrong.
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: So do you see it in.
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: Kind of all aspects of motherhood that everything is just
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: more anxious?
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: Matter of fact, I have said for years that motherhood
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: is a recipe for guilt and questioning, that if you
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: discipline your kid too much, your mean, if you don't
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: discipline them enough, you're spoiled. At any moment in time,
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: you might convince yourself here on one or the other
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: of those spectrums. And so if you're already anxious and
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: not sleeping well and you have home into TikTok videos,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: like the process of parenting is already hard. I have
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: often said that it's like God's gift to us to
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: like get rid of all of our last like vanity, arrogance,
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: you know, selfishness that I think we are designed to
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: be a little pressed in parenthood and we should see
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: ourselves as growing in that moment, Like how do we
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: become better people with these like realizing we are actually
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: not in control of this situation. And I oftentimes tell
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: parents that you're going to feel a lot better once
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: you realize you're not actually in control, that like you're
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: kind of along for the ride. And that's like probably
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: a mantra that could really help. Like the sooner families
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: figure out that they can't they can't like a recipe
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: like put these things together and end up with a
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: perfect child, the happier they're going to be. Some families
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: learned that earlier than others. You know, they have a
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: baby in the niku and things didn't go the way
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: they wanted and they deal with that real early, and
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: then other families, you know, it takes some time. But
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: I do think that learning that you're not actually going
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: to ever do it perfect, I think is something that's
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: important to kind of come to grips with. And I
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: do think that it's a little bit of a spiritual
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: growth process for ourselves, you know that, Like I'm actually
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: not in control here, Like I'm going to do my
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: best and I'm going to get up and I'm going
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: to do the things I need to do. Because our
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: jobs as parents are important for sure. It's not like
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: we don't matter.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: But do you think it has anything to do with
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: the age that one becomes a mother? Because I have
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: a theory that simply because I know very very young mothers,
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: Like a lot of my friends in Wales had babies
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: at twenty twenty one, twenty two, and then I know
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: a lot of mothers who became mothers at thirty five,
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: thirty six and later and.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: Later, and the twenty year olds have got it down.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: They just coast.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Because they already know what's going on, and they seem
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: to be much more capable and honesty just happier yeah
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: doing it.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: And that's because I think because you overthink it when
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: you're older. You've spent so much time, like envisioning what
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: perfect motherhood will look like. I had my oldest at
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: twenty seven, and so I didn't have a lot of
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: time to think about like these are the things I'm
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: going to do, and so I didn't. I don't know.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I just don't think about it very much. Is that terrible?
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: I think that raising ages of parents have both pros
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: and cons. Obviously there's more financial stability. I got married young,
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: but waited seven years to have kids because I was
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: married before med school, So I waited till I was
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: done to have my kids. I love that kind of
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: grew up with my husban. We kind of grew together
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: as people. Our marriage was really solid, and then we
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: introduced children into that. We've been through residency and a
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: whole bunch of hardship, and so that was good. But
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: what I see a lot of times in America at least,
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: is people wait to get married and then rush to
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: have children. And so that I think contributes to the
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: anxiety you're seeing in the older moms. Is it's not
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: just that they've waited to have kids for a while
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: and there's a lot writing on it. It's also that
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: a lot is changing fast for them. They used to
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: have a career. They had all these things they were
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: keeping track of in boxes, things to read, stuff to
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: keep up on whatever their field that they needed to study,
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: and they were frequently successful and like really you know driven.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: Some of them had the illusion that they could continue
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: to function with two professionals in their home and just
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: drop their kids off at daycare, which comes into like
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: a crashing end when they realized that, like, wow, that's
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: it's really hard. And but they really thought they could
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: because people tell them they can and that it's all good,
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: it's gonna be peachy. But you know, if you have
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: like a doctor and a lawyer both working full time
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: with two or three kids, like it, people are gonna
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: be miserable. Like they're gonna be miserable. Someone's gonna be miserable.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: And and so they're not sleeping. Sometimes they barely know
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: their husband. Maybe their marriage is solid, maybe it isn't,
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: because they like got married at an older age and
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: then rushed to have children, and they had like a
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: whole identity, They had a whole identity before this whole
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: other thing happened. Like they were this whole person with
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: a job and a life and friends. And then they
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: get married and they have kids and it's like a
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: whole nother identity and it's it's a lot. It's a
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: lot to handle with a baby. Whereas the young people
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure that it's the age as much as
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: the fact that it's not all of those things, right,
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: You don't know life without children, They don't. I remember
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: when I got married, like I never lived alone, you know.
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: I went from living with my roommates in college when
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: I got married three weeks later, and I just don't remember.
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: I didn't have an apartment that was all my own,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: where I didn't have to share space or like compromise
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: on things. And I think it's much easier to transition
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: to family life when you've never been outside of communal living.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Makes hot?
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Saying that right, I think I want to rap. But
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: do you have any prescriptive advice for any moms or
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: dads listening who maybe are feeling overly anxious and maybe
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: overthinking things. Because while I don't try too hard, I
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: do do a lot of research and I don't trust
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of people, and so there's been more times
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: than I can possibly count where I mean, you're a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: medical professional, I've done this in other settings too, but
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: where I've been told something about my child and I'm like,
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: that's not true. It's not I know it's not true,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: and I will get another I'll get another piece of advice.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: I'll go see someone else. And I was right. I
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: was right way more often than I was wrong. I can.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: At this point, I feel like I should have a
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: medical degree, Like I can diagnose strap. I can diagnose yeah,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I mean strap is like that's a good one. But
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: I can. I can treat most things. And it's difficult
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: sometimes in a medical setting. When someone says to me, like,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: your kid has a virus, I'm like, no, the one
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: hundred and four one hundred and five fever that she's
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: had for five days straight is not a virus. Inorrect,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: I don't think questioning things that you're told from a
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: medical provider is a bad thing by itself that that
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: I do not. I would not say that. I would
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: agree that. Even there are times when like you'll see
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: a doctor on Tuesday and we'll say something, and then
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: by Wednesday it looks really different, and some people are like,
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: well I saw a doctor Tuesday, and I'm like, no, no, no,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: please call me back, because this child looks different on
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: Wednesday than they did on Tuesday. So whenever it doesn't
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: feel right, you should always circle back. I think that
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: the biggest advice I would say is that the internet
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: moms groups and even sometimes groups that you meet in person,
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: can get really intense and very sure of themselves that
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: they are giving good advice. There's a lot of reasons
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: why people get overconfident about their advice. Think a lot
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: of it driven out of insecurity and things like that.
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: You know, they if they feel like they're doing something
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: with their kids, their sure it's the right thing, and
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: so you need to be doing it. So if you're
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: not doing it, then it's a reflection on them. It's
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: like a whole thing, right, and try to devoid yourself
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: from the opinions of other people will make you very happy,
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: and that particularly in the moms groups like on Facebook
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: and stuff. If you really pay attention, there's oftentimes a
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: few parents who have really strong opinions and they're everywhere.
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: They're like on five different trat groups. They're responding to everything.
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: There's always something there. They have really strong opinions. And
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: I used to follow some of the groups just to
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: kind of see what was going on when I was younger.
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: I've stopped doing that, but it was kind of concerning
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: to me because some of the moms that were most
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: vocal online. If you had met them and met their children,
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: you would have never taken advice from them. And I
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: kept thinking to myself, like, don't aren't you busy? Like
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: you've got like an autistic kid and like three other
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: kids running around your house and most of us do
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: not have time just sit on Facebook all day, And
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: so there's a there's a certain amount of like almost
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: unwellness in that right, like that you're on wine and
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: you're giving a whole bunch of advice to someone when
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: really your attention should be on your child. And so
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: most of the time those groups are full of a
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: lot of really weird advice. And so yeah, like if
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: you if you say, you know, I'm not sure, I'd
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: really like to see a specialist about this, or I'd
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: like to get this double checked by someone else that's different,
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: then I'm going to ask this friend on Facebook, or
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: I'm going to listen to a TikToker Because the amount
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: of bad advice there is is pretty substitive. And also
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: that even if pediatricians, like particularly in my world, don't
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: know other pediatricians don't know much about vitamins or holistic
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: work or anything like that, and that's fine. But if
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: they're like worried about your baby, like no, no, no,
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: I'm actually worried and I need you to do this thing,
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: and they look like anxious and concerned, then you should
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: pay attention because most things and pediatrics don't worry us.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: We're like, they're fine.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: It's like a mijor you know, it's like a Mito
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: fresh fold.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Your kids fine, you know.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: And when a pediatrician is actually worried, like everyone should
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: pay attention because we don't actually get frazzled that much.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: Kids are usually pretty healthy. So that would be the
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: other thing. When parents are arguing with us about like
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: I don't want to see that specialist or I don't
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: want to get that blood work, or I don't I
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: think my baby's growing fine, those really worry us, you know,
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: And so picking those kind of battles is probably unwise
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: because pediatric care going back to the standard is pretty low.
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: You know, if a pediatrician says you're iron deficient, you're
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: iron deficient. If you you know, like the they catch
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: like the really severe problems, right, and so a lot
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: of the smaller details, what I would say optimal health
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: is not really on the radar and so yeah. Usually
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: usually they're going to tell you if they're worried, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: you probably pay attention to that.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: I have a follow up question. Actually, I know I
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: said I was done, but I'm not done. Let's just
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: keep doing so, but people stop listening to podcasts like
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: the generally speaking no, but I do want to keep going.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: But I have one more question than I promised. We're done.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: So this is something that I struggle with as a
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: parent who like does have a healthy distrust of the
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: medical establishment. Over the course of the last five years,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: almost exactly five years.
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: Actually, yeah, and it's been hard to do my job.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the things that I took for like for I don't.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: I don't take for granted anymore. I had a lot
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: of blind faith that I have lost in the last
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: five years. But I look at a lot of the
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: like Crunchy mom space also with a very healthy sets
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: of distrust because those ladies are crazy, Like there's some
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: crazy stuff in there, but they were they but they
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: were right about a lot of stuff too. So like,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: I don't, how do I find like sane medical advice
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: that like takes a little bit of the medicine takes
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: a little bit of the maha. But like, do I
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: think that the floor it's gonna kill my kid? No?
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Do I think I want it in my water? Now?
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I do anymore? Like where do
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: I go? Who do I turn to?
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean, I have all
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: that in my head, but I'm not sure where to
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: send someone outside of that. And I also think that
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: that is a major part of the anxiety. And and
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: I've watched it. I think so much happened in COVID
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: that disrupted our assumptions of a lot of things. And
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: so just like you said, I have a lot of
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: families who were like I. I always thought everything was fine,
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: and now I question everything. That's been very hard for
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: me because even though I have always had unvaccinators in
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: my practice, because for me, and I had told you
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: this before, it's a human rights issue that I don't
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: want people who choose not to vaccinate their kids to
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: also not have a pediatrician. I don't think that's a
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: great idea.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: But can I push back on you for a hot
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: second on that? But what if they give my newborn
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: measles in the waiting room?
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: That's a complicated conversation, But I will.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Say that because I'm with you and we.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: Had a measles outbreak. Talk about public health policy going awry.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: We had a mus outbreak in Columbus a couple winters ago.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: It was really really, really poorly handled by our public
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: health establishment in Columbus's actually shocking, and I actually ended
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: up on the phone with the head of the Department
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: of Health and still was like, would they wouldn't even
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: let me test my patients who were unvaccinated and why
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: they wanted me to wait until they had a rash
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: which they're super contagious in the days pour for their
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: rash and they would only let me test. There's only
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: so many test kits and they were like numbered testkts
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: and I could only get a kid approved if the
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: kid already had a rash. So super frustrating, and we
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: were really diligent because we are a practice that knows
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: we have unvaccinated kids. We went into like top mode
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: for like the kids that were on vaccine were coming
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: in another door, and we were taking extra precautions and
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: we were we wanted to test everyone. We ran a
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: musles clinic to get people who maybe had changed their
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: mind in light of an actual musles epidemic, and we did.
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: We gave out like one hundred vaccines in like two days.
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: So this is why it's nice to actually be in
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: a practice that is with you in an outright like that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: I would hope that that that It's an argument pediatricians
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: use to kick people out of practices that I think
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: is a really poor argument. When you talk to them
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: in private, they often say I don't want those families
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: around because they're a pain, and they can be. I
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: mean that can be difficult at times, but for the
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: most part, I still think it's really important, particularly for
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: community public health, that someone who actually knows infectious diseases
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: in children are carrying snated children. I think that's most important.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: So I'm not sure.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you for playing along with me, because I that
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: is that's a good valid argument, and it's not one
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: that I've ever been able to, you know, I think
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: it's important to have that conversation.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: I think it's very important. And so I started to say,
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: I've had these kids in my practice for a long time,
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: and I kind of they kind of fell into a
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: few groups. They were kind of like the crunchy hippie moms,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: who mostly voted blue, who didn't want anything foreign around
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: their babies and like wore all other shoes and you know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: would sing me songs and crochet in the office like
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: love them. There were you know, my like super educated
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: healthcare or science people who were like, I just don't
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: I don't think my child needs a hepatitis be shot. Fine, okay,
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: So like you know, like they would have like really
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: high level conversations about why they didn't want this one
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: or they wanted.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: To one of the regrets I have.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think it's fine, but like just
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: the if you start with does my kid need it?
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: That should be the first question. And then I had,
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: of course my like kind of homeschool like rural more
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: rural or homeschooling kind of families who didn't vaccinate, and
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: those were kind of my three pots right of families.
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: Then COVID happened and I saw so many people in
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: crisis who had always vaccinated all of their children. They
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: had like you, Bethany, never questioned anything, and it created
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: a chaos within them that was hard because they didn't
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: trust anymore. Yeah, and we really need to work on
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: getting that back, and I hope we can but it's
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: been a difficult road. At one point I actually closed
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: to new patients because I just couldn't take It. Wasn't
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: that any one particular family wasn't welcome. It was that
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: the families that were flooding into the office were all
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: in this emotional crisis.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: They had always been in a practice where they vaccinated
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: and they did all their vaccines and they never questioned anything.
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: So all of them were having that same anxiety that
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: you are talking about, and they were coming in all
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: at once and wanted to talk about it, and I
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: was like, I don't mind talking about it, but like
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: I gotta go, you know, I got things to do.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: And so we paused with new patients for a while,
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: and now we're back open. But it's been really interesting
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: to watch how many people their children were one hundred
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: percent no questions as vaccinated, who stopped completely, and it
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: was really hard for me to even get them back
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: to like reasonable place because I think children should be vaccinated.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: I think we need to be cautious and purposeful in
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: our vaccine policy.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: And we're not during COVID, which we weren't.
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: And you see the ramifications of doing something that that
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: breaks people's trust. Yeah, and so it's been really hard
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: to watch, and I think all across America that's happening.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: And if we were honest with people about things, we
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: would we would build trust. And it's you know, it
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: can take they always say, like it takes a lifetime
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: to build a reputation and can take a day to
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: lose it. And that's what happened in our public health
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: establishment in COVID and I'm really hoping we can get
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: it back because we don't want measles outbreaks. I mean,
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: you know, some of my anti vax families are like,
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: I'd rather have measles than the vaccine, and I'm like, no, no,
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: because you know, if you are a child who's you
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: mean a lot of logically weak or metabolically like mitochondria
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: or metabolically weak, then you probably were the child who
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: might have gotten encephalopathy from measles. They're like, only so
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: many kids died of measles. I'm like, right, vulnerable children
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: died of measles, and those same vulnerable children maybe they
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: have a stronger reaction to the MMR. But that child
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: that has stronger reaction to the MMR is also probably
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: the child who'd have a really bad reaction to measles.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: So that's what we So I got a baby version
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: of the measles from an MMR, and my mom brought
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: me to the pediatrician. This was like in my family lore,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: and like confronted my pediatrician about it, like she has
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: a rash, she has a fever. Why did I give
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: this to her? And the pediatrician said, if this is
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: how sick she is with the shot, think about how
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: six she would be with the actual measles. And that
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: the same thing happened with my older two sons. My
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: older two sons got sick from the measle shot. They
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: both got rashes, they both got fevers. They were really
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: not good for like three days. And I kind of
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: ran that because what my pediatrician told my mom thirty
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: seven years ago, like and she died twenty years ago,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: like that can be lost in translation, and so I
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: ran it. I ran it past my doctor. I was
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: like this, this is what I remember my mother being told.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Does that jive with you? Because my pediatrician agreed with that,
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: what that.
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: You can get measles from the vaccine if.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: You got if my boys, oh my old boys, like
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: imagine I was vaccine. Yeah, imagine they would have gotten
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: if they got the real thing.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: They're purposely giving you measles, and your immune system is
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: forming a natural response to that purposeful exposure, but they're
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: giving it to you in a small viral load. So yeah,
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: if you don't handle the vaccine while you you probably
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: are not going to handle the disease. Well.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: Think there's legitimate argument that has not been had whatsoever
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: about why we're still using a tribe valent live virus
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: vaccine for measles. When we got rid of the rest
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: of our live virus vaccines for the most part, they
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: just brought out chicken Box, which is live as well.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: And should we be doing R and D into maybe
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: a new fancier like who uses something that was built
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty in the rest of their life. So
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: I do think there's discussion to be had about whether
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: this vaccine is the best we could do in a
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: scientific community. But I still would take it over measles
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: any day. And I had a child admitted during the
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: measles outbreak who was unvaccinated. Sadly for his mom, he
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: was like she was one of those anxious moms who
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: was kind of afraid of everything. She was afraid of germs,
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: she was afraid of the vaccines. She had kind of
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: kept her kid home in COVID, and like, he barely
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: left the house wo and he went to the er
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: because he fell on his home gym in his living
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: room and injured his arm and went to the er
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: and caught mezzles in the er at children's And most importantly,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: when I say it was a public health disaster, it's
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: not hard to contact trace who was in the ear.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: So when you say, like, what do I do if
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: I was exposed in any like, we do know who
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: has them, and we can contract trace back who was
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: around them. It takes two weeks to incubate, so they
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: didn't call her for sixteen days to tell her she'd
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: been exposed. And there are things we can do post exposure.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: And he ended up in the ICU. He was so sick.
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: And I was like, I do not understand. I'm like,
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: how coming off of COVID. When we were contact tracing
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: toddlers in their daycare.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: I got contact traced from a children's museum in Philadelphia.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: We got I don't know how they did it, but
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: we were exposed to the measles I don't like seven
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: eight years ago, like before COVID. They somehow we were
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: exposed at the Police Touch Museum in Philadelphia. Yeah, and
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: we got a call and I was like, how do
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: you even have my number?
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: They you know, you registered, you know, you paid, you
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: know whatever, use your credit card. I mean, we can
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: do that, right.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: I was super disappointed in the lack of communication that
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: had happened, but he was very sick, and and so,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: you know, I think that people really don't take the
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: disease of musles seriously enough. Yeah, and so yeah, yeah,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: we're you know, hopefully we won't see a bunch more outbreaks.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: But the vaccine rates dropping have have definitely made that worse.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: I lived in Cambodia, I don't know, fifteen years ago now,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: and I saw vaccine preventable diseases in person, and it
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: was the months I saw a lot of momps and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: that stuff is and that's what gross. So yeah, it's bad,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: it's awful, But seeing a lot of these things in
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: person made me super pro vax And like I've written
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: for The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: York Posts, like all the super super pro vax, and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: I haven't deviated from that. I like, I'm still my
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: kids are still getting MMR. They're still getting all those things.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: But now I'm struggling with like do I get the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: flu shot? Now we didn't get it this year. I
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: don't know. I struggled with it. I'm still struggling with it.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: Happy we've you know, that ship has sailed on getting
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: that the day that they were born. Yeah, I would
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: not make that decision again. So it's hard. It's hard
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: to you know.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: When I started in practice, the ACIP, who recommends vaccination schedules,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: had two schedules. There was mandatory vaccines and an optional vaccines.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: And they recognized that some things were really important for
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: community spread, like measles and polio and whooping cough, and
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: then they would move things like flu and chicken pox
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: and things that were not as serious into the optional.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: And this is like one of those things where pediatricians
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: don't pay attention and they just do what they're to
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: because I remember that, I mean twenty five years, it's
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: not that long ago. I mean I'm not like seventy
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: or whatever. And so then the insurance companies wouldn't pay
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: for vaccines that weren't listed as mandatory.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: So instead of.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: Doing the hard thing, which would have been passing legislation
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: that said insurance companies have to pass pay for vaccines,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: or also the easy thing, which would just be like
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: the government pays for all the vaccines, which would be
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: fine too, they pay for a lot of them already,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: they decided the easiest thing for them to do was
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: to stick every vaccine that is a proof for children
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: in the mandatory schedule. And what that did was it
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: made pediatricians say, oh, I'm supposed to do all of
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: these things. Yeah, And then the pediatricians were like, I mean,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: I've had patients come to me and they're like, I mean,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: I got all my vaccines, but my patrician kicked me
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: out because I didn't want my three year old to
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: have a flu shot. We've had family members, you know,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: I've had lots of these stories, family members, families have
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: really bad experiences with Guilian morat or whatever after a
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: flu shot. We just don't want one. But they kicked
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: me out just for that, and I was like, Wow,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: that is not a hill that I, as a patrician,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: would die on at all. And so I think we've
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: made a mistake. And then the other thing is that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: a lot of the states align their school entry and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: daycare entries to the mandatory schedule. They just passed alas
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: said whatever the ACIP says is mandatory you have to have.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: And so then when you link those laws to the
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: ACIP guidelines and you throw every vaccine that has ever
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: been approved for use in children, which is not the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: same as like needing to be in every single child,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: like you can approve something and that everybody need it,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: it really made things messy. And so when COVID was approved,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: it went on the schedule and it became mandatory, like
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: so it's you saw that in COVID, but it actually
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: was going on before COVID, and it was a huge
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: misas and and that's my opinion. I think it's a
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: huge misteak, and we should just be a little bit
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: more detailed because we're assuming families don't have the IQ
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: or the ability to navigate that, but I think they do.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: I think people have more ability to navigate things than
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: we give them credit for.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have I have one more question, and yes.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah go foray care. You haven't said much so you know, I.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Know, I know, I'm sorry.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: It's okay. Beef tallow yes or no?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: For what like instead of seed oils. That's the big thing.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: Like should you fry your French fries and beef tallow? No?
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: No, no, I fry my French fries and beef talo.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: But people won't mean how to rub it all over
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: my skin?
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: Oh, this is like the latest Instagram tran Ten people
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: this week have told me to use beef tallow and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: it stinks like beef.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: So no, I like clog your pores and make you
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: all gross.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's good.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: We have so many good skincare products. I mean, gosh,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: the dermatology world has given us so many great things,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: both naturally and not. I'm not smearing tallow on my skin. No,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: thank you.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: I feel like I just won ten fights, so thank you.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. It moisturizes
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: great and it's certainly safe. It would it be my
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: favorite thing to put on my skin.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: No way, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: I have all sorts of crazy things people put on
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: their bodies. But I say, whatever you put on your body,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: you should be willing to eat because it absorbs into
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: your body, and you know it is especially for baby skins,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: so I am kind of careful when I put on babies.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, I feel like we need to have
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: you come back for another episode in the future because
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: this was really fun and went on too for too long.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much that I love. I love
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: talking to sane like people who I can actually have
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: a conversation with. I wish I could invite my pediatrician
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: on the podcast, but then he would know what I do,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: and that's not good.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: I don't know, it's good. Mom.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: I feel like this was very eye opening and makes
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 5: me feel like I should worry less, even though I
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 5: feel like I worry worry less than everybody else.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: If it makes you feel any better, just remember, like
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: I always tell families, and we'll end with this, that
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: like we're very privileged mothers. You know, in the world
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: of motherhood, most women until recently lost half their children.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and we have Amazon Prime, you know.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: I mean, I mean they had to pluck chickens and
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: sew clothes and worry their kid was gonna die of polio.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: I mean like bad stuff, right, like really really bad stuff.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: And I think we are filling our time with worry
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: instead of enjoying the time that we've been given to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: enjoy our children. And I usually like to say to myself, like,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: what would mothers one hundred years ago on right now?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: Like they all, like, you know a lot of kids
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: made it, even though they didn't, you know, like like
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: the mothering part is probably not worth all the stress
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: that we're giving ourselves. And you know, they need to
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: be fed, they need to have bedtimes, they need to
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: have boundaries, and if you can do those things, everyone
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: should be pretty sane.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: I love it all right, So thank you so much,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: really super appreciate your time to all of our listeners.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Don't forget to subscribe to our substack and Apple Podcasts
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: and Spotify and all of those fancy new bangled apps
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: that you use to record listen to your podcasts until
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: next time, Saddle up
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: Ricochet, Join the conversation.