Birth, Baby!

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Welcome, this is Birth, Baby!

Your hosts are Ciarra Morgan and Samantha Kelly.

Ciarra is a Birth Dula, Hypnobirthing Educator, and Pediatric Sleep Consultant.

Samantha is a Birth Dula, Childbirth Educator, and Lactation Counselor.

Join us as we guide you through your options for your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum maturing.

Hey y'all, today we are going to talk about how the heck you choose a pediatrician.

We get asked this all the time.

People are constantly in search of a pediatrician.

So Samantha, do you wanna start us off on a little bit of information?

Yeah, definitely.

So, I mean, I think choosing a pediatrician is harder than it maybe needs to be because there's, and also not as complicated as it sounds.

It's kind of a little bit of both, right?

Like there's a lot of options out there.

There's a lot of different like approaches to pediatrics.

There's a lot of different things that you need to be considering.

But I think that, you know, the first thing to think about is, you know, what are your goals in your care?

Are you planning on breastfeeding?

How does pediatricians you're looking at approach breastfeeding?

You know, are you planning on vaccinating?

How does that pediatrician's office approach vaccinating?

How, you know, how do they do their scheduling?

Do they have like separate waiting rooms or separate things for sick kids versus well kids?

Are they a family doctor?

Can your whole family go see them?

Or do they just see children?

Like there's so many different things to think about.

And when you're thinking about it, I think your personal priorities are gonna be really important with that.

So I think number one, a lot of parents really get overwhelmed when choosing a pediatrician when you're pregnant.

Some pediatricians do allow interviews, but a lot of them don't really do interviews or they do like a monthly like meet the doctor, Zoom call sort of a thing.

There's different, you know, everybody's gonna have different things.

But if they don't allow interviews, you can always call ahead and talk to the staff at the front desk, get an idea of how are they listening to you?

How are they answering your questions?

You know, just how do they seem when you call?

Likely that's who you're gonna be talking to the most when you call and your kid is sick or has an ear infection or whatever.

So talking to them and figuring out like how are they responding to you is gonna be really helpful for that.

So how you feel when you call is really important.

Yeah, I think another with the interview piece of that is it really depends on their model of care.

So some pediatrician's offices, you filter through a bunch of pediatricians, right?

Like you might have one with one this time and next time you might see a different pediatrician.

There are some like in Austin, we have one, I'm not gonna name names because it's not my favorite, but they have like one main pediatrician and a bunch of nurse practitioners that work for that pediatrician.

And the nurse practitioners are actually the ones that you meet with and they're kind of just mocking Jays for all of what the pediatrician thinks.

And you can't really choose because it's based on your zip code with that one on who you see.

So one of my, if you haven't already listened to our episodes about jaundice and fevers, those were two pediatricians that are with a local company as well, but that one is a different model of care.

So that one is where you actually don't even take insurance.

It's one of, it's like a subscription based sort of one where you pay by the month and it includes all of your visits, texting the doctor, asking questions, sending a picture of a rash, that sort of thing.

Is that important to you?

Because I mean, my doctor, I can't do that, you know, but my doctor takes my insurance and those doctors don't.

And for us, it's a financial decision where we weren't able to afford that at that time when our kids were really little.

So, you know, that doctor's office that from those pediatricians, they actually do very long interviews.

We had one, I think, we have a client that had, I think it was a 30 minute slot with Dr.

Whitaker.

And they were like, we had him there for over an hour and he never acted in the way.

We couldn't believe he really just sat and answered all of our questions.

Yeah.

So I think that that's a big piece of it is how much do you need?

Some people are more type A and they need, and I can say that because I am type A person, they need a little bit more.

And then other people are super chill and relaxed and like, it's really gonna be fine.

And they don't need as much one-on-one care.

Maybe they're fine with seeing a different pediatrician each time.

Even a pediatrician's office I go to, if our doctor doesn't have availability and I wanna get in sooner, I just get in with a different doctor and that doesn't bother me.

But some people, even that would be too much.

So ask what that model of care is like.

Just like when you had an OB or a midwife and they were on a rotating on-call model or did you see the same OB at every doctor appointment?

It's a similar concept there.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I mean, there's really just so many things to think about.

Like in our family, we see a family physician and so our whole family sees this doctor and actually my husband's grandparents also see this doctor.

So he's very like intergenerational.

And for us, that works really well, because for me, it was a priority that it's easy.

So we wanted somebody that we could all schedule all of our yearly visits and it would be comfortable for my son to see him as long as he wants to.

And there's lots of different options there.

He has some really great nurse practitioners who we've seen more often than him in the past couple of years, because we've been pretty chill.

But my priority with him was I wanted someone who would trust my instincts as a mother.

And when I call and say, hey, I think my kid has an ear infection, he's like, okay, well, let's take care of that then.

And we can get that stuff taken care of really quickly.

And I'm able to text him.

He gave me, I went in and saw him in pregnancy with my daughter, with my son and interviewed him and asked him all of my questions.

I asked him, how do you approach breastfeeding?

What is your, what's the deal if my kid's sick?

What am I gonna do?

What do I do when my baby's born?

How do we approach that and all these different things?

And so he gave us his cell phone number.

He gave us actually his wife's cell phone number.

He's like, if you can't reach me and you need me when the baby's born, call my wife and she'll get ahold of me, which was maybe not usual, but it was really, really wonderful.

And it ended up that we did need him when the baby was born because he was jaundiced and they weren't gonna release him from the hospital unless we could get him in with the pediatrician the next day, which was a Saturday.

And so he came into the office on a Saturday morning to check my son's jaundice levels and tell us, you know, kind of manage his care.

And that was so huge for us and, you know, made a big difference.

And then since then, he's just been, you know, my kids are older now.

We don't really go in that often anymore, but he's so, he's always been so caring and helpful for us.

And that was what we needed.

And he's always trusted me and what I think about my kids and their development.

That's a dying art.

My instincts, I know, it's amazing.

It's honestly, and because maybe it's because we live in an area that's way more populated, but it just does seem like everyone is so overworked.

You know, they're having these little 10 to 15 minutes appointments, and that's Dr.

Whittaker shared with us.

I think it was on that fevers episode when we were talking about it a little bit, he was like, I had to get out of that type of pediatrician work because I did not want to just spend 10 to 15 minutes with the family.

I wanted to be able to look at the whole picture because there's so many things I'm missing to the puzzle.

So another piece of that is, you know, does your family have some special needs or, you know, genetic disorders or whatever that you may end up needing more one-on-one with?

And you might not be able to get that with a regular pediatrician that's seeing, you know, a new person every 10 minutes.

So another, when you were saying the thing about your family practice doctor, it reminded me too, if you have different modalities that you also like to use, like chiropractic or acupuncture, or you're a little bit alternative where you're like, you're not going to do antibiotics yet, you're going to put colloidal silver in their ears or something first, right?

Like think about those things, ask those things to the doctor or ask them, see if you can, even if they don't do interviews, you can call and ask to leave a message on the nurse line.

And you could leave a message there and I bet a nurse will call you back, or maybe they won't.

And then that's your tell that maybe you didn't want to work with them.

But say those things, if you have some things that like set you apart a little bit and you're like, we're a little quirky, maybe to some people, try to scare away.

It's kind of like dating, right?

You're like, I'm going to scare them away early instead of being really disappointed later.

Say the inside thoughts, guys.

I know, it's good.

Yeah, and I think there's also some really important questions that, you know, important factors that you need to be considering when choosing a pediatrician too.

And I think that this is where it comes in really handy to be able to have those interviews or conversations with the pediatrician to ask these questions.

So I would say, you know, unless you have your very best friend who is seeing this pediatrician and you already know all of the answers about them, try to figure out a way to get in and talk to them.

And if they're not willing to do that, then maybe that's not the place to be.

But there's a lot of important factors to consider, especially in that first year of your baby's life.

So, you know, things like we already said, like, you know, do they have a separate waiting room for sick kids versus well kids?

And how important is that to you?

Do you want to be sitting in the waiting room next to a kid who has chicken pox with your two month old baby?

Or what would they do in that way?

If your child is sick, how many appointments do they have a day for sick visits?

Do they do telehealth visits for things that maybe they don't necessarily need to actually see the physical child?

They just need to hear that hacking cough to be like, oh yeah, that's bronchitis, different things like that.

And also, how do they approach breastfeeding?

I think this is a really, really important one to think about if you are planning on breastfeeding.

Do they support breastfeeding exclusively in the first year?

Do they support breastfeeding after the first year?

If you're breastfeeding your 18 month old, are they gonna be like, well, it's time for them to get off the breast because it's rotting their teeth and yada, yada, yada.

Kind of like we talk about with OBs, like a V-back friendly OB.

Well, are they really?

Cause like, what are they saying?

What are they doing?

So, you know, a good sign.

One of the things I was so impressed with when we did the jaundice episode with Dr.

Lisa Gonzalez was she said, nobody leaves her, she does a prenatal pediatric appointment with people when they're pregnant and nobody leaves there without knowing how to hand express colostrum.

And she shows them and helps them do that so that they're able to, if they need to supplement after the baby's born, they're able to supplement with their own colostrum.

That's amazing.

Not that it's bad to have to use formula or donated milk, but how cool is it that you could do it on your own?

That is breastfeeding supportive, right?

I mean, she is doing the pre-work to try to make sure even, we don't even know if there's gonna be a problem, but we're gonna support you now to say if there is one then, we're gonna be able to fix that or help with that.

We have this later on down the line, but I'm gonna talk about it now instead, because we're talking about these things that are kind of the check marks of, is this a good doctor for you?

We touched a little bit on vaccines.

I will say, some doctors are okay with no vaccinations.

Some, usually that's the ones that are more of this membership-based, subscription-based, and that's usually because they don't usually take insurance.

And insurance companies often have some sort of regulation with the people that they're accepting claims from, that it needs to have all these boxes checked and making sure you're on the vaccine schedule is oftentimes one of those, I believe.

So, you may or may not find that in a doctor who takes insurance.

And in the Austin area, I think we have two, and I don't know if either of those take insurance actually.

And then the other one is the subscription-based one that we were talking about.

We've already interviewed with them.

So, it's pretty hard.

And now some take a delayed vaccine schedule, but you have to show that you're on that delayed schedule and that you're really going to sign up and do those.

And for example, my pediatrician's office, when my son was born six years ago, they would take you even if you weren't gonna vaccinate.

But then they changed it.

And then it was, we will take you, but you have to be on some sort of schedule to try to catch up.

And if you aren't doing that, then you're gonna be released as a client.

And we never had insurance that even takes, it does vaccinations, because we're not on a normal insurance.

Where ours, we have to be for those out of pocket if we want.

No preventative care is covered because it's more of a sharing program and not typical insurance.

So I wasn't gonna pay $150, even if I wanted to do a vaccine at a certain time, I'm not gonna pay that much money for one vaccine.

So we had to go to like the Shots for Tots clinic if we wanted to do it.

And they were really okay with that.

They said, okay, well, financially we see that that makes more sense for you.

Just bring back the piece of paper afterwards showing that you did it.

And so they would work with us a little bit, right?

It didn't mean, you know, had to get it done there.

And so I really respected that and liked that they would work with us for what worked for our specific family.

So asking those questions about how supportive they're gonna be of those things.

What if you change your mind down the line?

What does that look like?

And they may change their mind down the line and you may be looking for a new pediatrician.

So that's something to consider too.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think with that too, like, you know, I'm just thinking like, for so many of the people who are listening to this podcast, we're thinking about like the newborn time and that first, you know, year or two of life.

But, you know, your kid's gonna be seeing a pediatrician for, you know, most of their childhood, really, until they're, I think you can see pediatrician until you're like 21 or something.

I don't really know.

But, you know, thinking through like, what is that gonna look like as they get older?

How, you know, there's, you know, like puberty that they're going through.

There's childhood sicknesses that they're gonna be going through at school.

Like, oh, we have to have a physical for them to play this sport, or we have to have, you know, this thing done in order for them to go on this trip, or I have to have a doctor's note because they stayed home because of this, that or the other.

How are we gonna approach those things?

How's that pediatrician approach those things?

Asking those questions for the future.

I think it's also really important because, you know, for a lot of us, we just wanna find somebody and stick with them and not have to go change doctors all the time.

So if that's you and you're not wanting to have to switch later on, then ask those questions ahead of time too.

Like, as my child gets older, what is that gonna look like?

And your kid isn't gonna wanna switch.

So if you haven't had a baby yet, let me just tell you, kids are not so flexible all the time, right?

So my son is so way more comfortable with our pediatrician that we've been seeing forever than he is when we have to go get a random one.

And usually it's the random one when we're the most sick because we're trying to get in last minute.

Another thing to consider, I didn't even think about when I had a girl, but now I think about it that I have a boy, is that, I don't know where, you know, depends on where you live, but around us, the majority of the pediatricians are female.

And there will come a time, I've actually seen recently, a lot of these posts in mom groups, sometimes I wonder if it's the algorithm listening to me and goes, oh, Ciarra was, I didn't even say this out loud before right now, and I'm about to say it, but it's been coming up.

They, it's in my thoughts.

They, yeah, are posting about like my eight year old, my 10 year old, my whatever.

My boys are saying that they want a male pediatrician.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a male pediatrician?

And so I had never even considered that, and there actually is one at my son's doctor's office, and they have like four locations now, and he only serves one of them.

So at a certain age, he may say he wants a male doctor, and I want to be able to do that for him, just like I would want to do for a female child, if they wanted to see a female doctor.

So that's something to consider.

If you have a boy, do you want to sign up for a boy pediatrician from the start?

Or you may not, that may not matter to you, but you've got to think, are they going to be resistant to change as they get a little bit older?

They might.

Very much, very much so.

Yeah, I think those are some really great starting places.

So once you have chosen your provider, you've chosen your pediatrician, you feel like they're the vibe, they're who you're gonna be with for the foreseeable future.

What happens in that first year?

Yeah, and also even before that, some people are really panicked about choosing that doctor before the baby's born.

And that is ideal.

It is easier because they are asking you at the hospital, which pediatrician did you choose?

Even birth centers, who's your pediatrician?

Because they wanna be able to send notes or be able to communicate or whatever, have that in your records.

So if you haven't chosen one, it's not the end of the world.

But you are, what I'm about to go into is how often you see this person.

And it's much more helpful if you've chosen before.

And here's why, because the first appointment is usually within the first week of life.

So if you're at a birthing center and you were released six to eight hours after your baby was born, you're gonna come back to the birthing center probably within the next 24 hours or they come to you.

And there's some relationship there as well, but you're still gonna need to have a pediatrician in the wings.

And you may need to see if something else, more medical is going on, you may need to see them.

If you have an OB, you're not seeing them again until like six weeks after you had a baby.

So you're for sure needing to go to the pediatrician if anything's happening, because you're not gonna go to them with a potentially sick baby or gunk in the eye or whatever.

So the first appointment is usually about days three to five post birth, but anytime in that first week.

Then we have an appointment generally at one month, two months, four months, six months, nine months, 12 months.

And then after that, it's like 15, 18, and then they start to space out a little bit more.

And at that first appointment in those first three to five days, they're gonna do stuff like check the jaundice levels.

Usually if there's any like worry about that, they're gonna recheck those, do a weight check, make sure a baby's not losing too much weight.

This is the piece where the breastfeeding part that Samantha was talking about is really important.

Because let's say your baby's lost 10% of their birth weight, are they gonna immediately panic and say that you need to supplement?

Or are they gonna encourage you with how to help you get more of your milk into your baby?

So that's a big piece too.

We had a client, gosh, what?

About a month ago now.

And their pediatrician was like telling them they needed to go to the ER, that their baby's lost too much weight and wasn't peeing exactly the number of diapers that the provider thought that it should be peeing a day, but it was like one off.

I mean, there were really strict guidelines that they had and they were really stressing these parents out.

And the dad was even like, the mom's a little more chill about this than able to really digest the information they're saying and weed out what is true and what's not and what's okay with us, because I would just be taking my baby to the ER.

So that, you know, they check for those little things, but do you want to go into Samantha kind of each of those checks throughout that year?

I know a lot of people think it's just for vaccines and yes, vaccines will be at some of these that they'll want to be doing those, but that's not the main point of these.

So what are some of the things that they go over at these appointments?

Yeah, and I think one more thing too, before we get into that on the breastfeeding piece, something else to consider is, are they referring to breastfeeding professionals?

Are they working with breastfeeding professionals?

Some pediatricians do have like, you know, IBCLCs or CLCs in the office that they can refer to if something is up or are they working regularly?

You know, hey, I think there's something going on with baby's weight gain.

I would recommend that you go see an IBCLC or a CLC and going through some of that stuff.

I think for me, as a CLC, that's a big one.

You know, if the pediatrician does, you know, they don't have a huge amount of breastfeeding training that's not their, that is not their, you know, forte.

Some of them do additional trainings, but that's not their whole piece.

So really, we want to see them working regularly with other breastfeeding professionals who, that is our entire role, is taking care of breastfeeding concerns.

So that's something else to consider as well, when you're looking at that stuff and having some of those issues coming up in the first few days, weeks, months of life.

But in those first few days, weeks, months of life.

So I think if you are delivering in a hospital, like we said, you're gonna go in probably the first, normally like 48 hours after your home from the hospital.

And they're gonna check all these different things.

They're gonna go over like, oh, how did the birth go?

How did all these things go?

They're gonna check baby's weight gain, make sure they're weighing appropriately.

We wanna see them starting to gain back their weight.

We wanna see babies back up to their birth weight by two weeks.

And so if at that first visit, baby is lower than what they were at the hospital, then they might say, hey, let's go ahead and have you come back in in a few days and we'll reevaluate again the baby's weight and just see how we're doing.

And they might have you come in a little bit more often than that one week, two week, one month sort of thing.

They might have you come every three to four days just to see how things are going.

So I think the weight game is probably the biggest piece right there at first.

And they're checking also their bilirubin levels.

How does their coloring look?

Are we concerned about that?

Okay, then let's do a blood test and see what that looks like.

Some pediatricians can do those heel pricks and blood tests in their office.

Some of them refer out to other labs to do those tests.

So that's something else to consider as well.

And then the other things that they're looking at is the developmental milestones.

How is your baby sleeping?

How is your baby moving around?

Are they starting to lift up their head?

Are they starting to reach for things?

Are they tracking with their eyes?

There's all these different little things that they're looking at.

They're going to check baby's head, ears, eyes and mouth and make sure everything looks right.

You know, they can evaluate, some of them can evaluate for like oral restrictions and different things like that.

They want to see like, do their ears get all cleared out from all that amniotic fluid?

Or is there something else going on in there?

They'll look for heart rate and respiration, make sure all of that is looking good.

They're going to look for the baby's skin.

My daughter has a birthmark on her little knee and she's had it since she was born.

And it's kind of a funny looking one.

Like it almost looks like a rash.

So every new nurse that comes in and looks at it is like, oh, what is that?

What's going on?

We're like, oh no, it's been there since birth.

And it's just stayed forever, which maybe someday it'll go away or not.

But they're looking for those things and writing them down so that they remember like, oh yeah, she has that little thing on her knee.

They're gonna press on baby's belly to, detect enlarged organs or hernias or constipation.

Also, it's a big one.

They're gonna check their legs and hips to check for dislocation or joint problems or dysplasia.

There's a lot of different things that can be going on after delivery.

Your baby, you go through a lot in delivery.

Your baby also goes through a lot in delivery.

So they wanna make sure that everything is still looking and feeling good after the hospital.

And then they'll be checking baby's genitalia to keep an eye out for any signs of infection or any potential issues that could be going on there.

So those are kind of like the first few things.

But I would say that developmental milestones are a huge piece of what we're looking for in the first year.

They wanna make sure that baby is developing appropriately, that you know what to be looking out for and what things are developmentally appropriate for your baby at different times.

They ask questions about like safety, like is your baby in a rear-facing car seat?

In your car, every time they ride in the car, are they starting to roll over?

Okay, well, are you still swaddling your baby at night?

Where does baby sleep?

What does baby drink?

All these different questions that are kind of safety that some of us don't necessarily know.

Like there's not really a manual on all these different things.

So they are kind of your coach through that first year of like, this is what you should expect.

This is what you should be looking for.

These are the things that you should be doing to help your baby meet their milestones and be safe and healthy and well in that first year.

Which is why it's even more important to find somebody that you really trust because you're gonna be getting a lot of advice from this person.

So the things that Samantha just listed are not only things that they're gonna do at the first appointment, but these are at every one of these well-check visits.

And then there are also some other things that are added at some of them.

So mom and both parents really are screened if they're both there.

Parent is screened for postpartum depression, anxiety, any sort of postpartum mood disorders.

They should be screened for those at some of these well-check visits.

I know a lot of people that are not vaccinating say, why do I need to go to a well-check visit?

Because they're just doing these to vaccinate.

So I will give a different perspective here, which I always like to say both sides.

I totally see why some people choose not to go to those appointments because they already know they don't want a vaccine.

So they don't want to go and then be tried to talk into a vaccine.

And they're like, I'd just rather skip it altogether.

But there are some positives that can come out of these appointments.

And so finding a provider that's not going to sit there and hassle you about your vaccine choice, if that's what you're worried about, is going to be important so that you can go and get all of these other things checked out.

So if you just skip a bunch of these, we don't know if your baby is on their own growth curve.

We don't know if, you know, some people are like, well, I can tell, I can see.

Well, sure, some babies you can.

My baby, you couldn't because he was always so low on curve.

I think he went from like 11th percent weight.

I think the highest he ever got was 23rd percentile, and it took until he was like four.

And for me, I was just like, come on, baby, like, let's eat more.

I'm constantly trying to get fat into that kid.

He has my husband's metabolism, good for him, but it's really hard.

And my daughter was always like chunked when she was little, so I never had to worry about her.

So these things, though, we wouldn't know if he was on his own growth curve or we wouldn't know if we needed a supplement with some sort of like toddler shake or something, if he is falling off of his curve, because that's not only what his body looks like, it's how it's gonna affect his organs, his brain.

Is he being able to learn and function properly if he's not getting the nutrition that he needs?

And it doesn't mean that I'm a bad parent because I wasn't giving him the nutrition he needs.

It means that his body is just different than my daughter's body was, and I needed that extra little help to know what was gonna be best for him.

So, and I nursed him past a year, but still, like I joke that I make skim milk.

There's nothing more I could have done.

So there are things like that where it's, if we don't go to these, we don't know if they're not meeting their milestones.

We don't know if they're sleeping properly, unless you have friends that are sleep professionals, or you're doing a lot of research on your own, which a lot of parents do, and that's great.

But it's nice to have a doctor that can back you up and give you that extra bit of, you know, kicking the pants to help you move in the right direction.

And that can be a supportive thing, not an adversarial thing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Especially like with those growth curves in the first year specifically, it's the difference of like half a pound to thriving versus struggling.

You can't look at your child and I mean, even like the tiniest little newborn baby, I can't tell if that baby is six pounds or six pounds, five ounces, but that is the difference between, you know, between doing well and not doing well for some babies.

So, you know, unless you have like one of those really specific scales at home that, you know, gets down to the 10th of an ounce, then you're not able to see that stuff.

So I think that's where the professionals really, really come in handy.

I mean, that's what they're there for, truly.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that if we just, and I'll go back always to Birth because that's where, that's our realm.

And staying in our lane sort of deal.

If this isn't your jam, you don't know all about all of this stuff, then having a pediatrician who does know and can see those little things that you might as a parent miss doesn't mean you're a bad parent.

It just means you're not a pediatrician.

So-

You didn't go to school for eight years to learn all this stuff.

Not for that stuff.

Maybe you went to school for eight years.

Maybe you're a lawyer.

So another piece of, if you want to relate it back to when you're having a baby, is there are people that skip doctor appointments during pregnancy, because they don't want to be bugged about the Tdap shot, or they don't want to be told they need a GBS screening if they were not going to get a GBS screening.

I know people that have skipped the ones at like 37, 38, 39 weeks, because they didn't want a cervical exam, but they didn't want to go in and argue about how they didn't want a cervical exam.

So they just skip it.

But there are other things they're doing at these appointments.

They can be make it or break it for health and safety and wellness of mom, parent, birthing parent, baby.

So it sucks when we don't have that relationship with whatever provider we have to where we can go in and be authentically ourselves.

That's why we say, say the things you're thinking in your head before it ever becomes.

Because when it comes down to things like this, when push comes to shove, you're gonna really need that person to be somebody that you trust and is on yourself.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely, there's so many different things.

And I think that's also why it's important to choose someone that you trust, whose opinion you're going to value.

If you're looking at that pediatrician, you're like, I kind of think you're full of crap, then you're not gonna listen to them later either.

So find someone that you trust, find someone that you get along with, that you can have a relationship with to some level, and roll with that.

And trust your instinct.

I think that's, we say that all the time when talking about pregnancy providers and pregnancy different, all these things in pregnancy, it is just as if not even more important when we're talking about the providers that you're choosing for your children.

Doing it during pregnancy is just practice for parenthood.

We're just, all this informed consent stuff, we always talk to people about with pregnancy.

We're always like, this is just gonna help you in your parenting journey, be able to advocate for what it is that you need for your kiddo.

So do you think we missed anything, Sam?

Anything left on your list?

I don't think so.

I think we hit all the things.

I think there'll be another episode in the future where we can talk more about some of these, more in-depth things like milestones and vaccines and what to expect at all those appointments in the first year.

But I think this kind of gives you all hopefully a good overview of some basics of choosing your pediatricians and different providers.

Yeah, and if you haven't yet listened to our episode with Year One Wellness about baby's first year, go check that out.

It's not as in-depth as we wanna get eventually, but it is a really great overview.

And we will talk to y'all soon.

Thanks so much for listening, bye.

Thank you for joining us on Birth, Baby!

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