“I think it’s a good idea to meet your pediatrician even before your newborn comes. Perhaps around month seven or eight of your pregnancy, you should schedule a prenatal consultation with your pediatrician. Here at the Brooklyn Heights office of Mount Sinai Doctors, we have free monthly pediatric prenatal consultations. It’s a chance to get to know your doctor and, perhaps, what to expect those first couple of days in the hospital. We’ll go over growth and development, anticipatory guidance, accident prevention, as well as, supporting you through those first couple of days in the hospital. Avoiding too much weight loss, making sure we don’t get too jaundice, and just setting up a schedule of what to do if your newborn gets sick, how to get in touch with us. We always schedule same day sick visits and have newborn slots specifically for newborns that first visit on day of life three, four, or five.”

“The best way to find a good pediatrician is to schedule a prenatal consult during your seventh month of pregnancy. It’s a great opportunity for you to sit down with the doctor and talk about his or her philosophy about medicine, about parenting, and make sure you feel comfortable with that physician and talking to them. You should work with a physician who is board certified in his or her field, which means that they’ve completed a residency training and passed an examination. It’s also a good idea to work with a doctor who is affiliated with a major academic medical center because that center will make sure the physician is up to date and practices appropriate standards of care. However, if over time you don’t feel comfortable with that physician for whatever reason, it is okay to switch at any time in the future.”

“I don’t really like talking about kids getting sick. It’s not really a fun topic. But we need to talk about it. Especially as a newborn, your baby is very vulnerable to the germs outside. Everybody asks me when can I travel? When can I go on the subway? When can I go on a plane? There’s no easy answer. It’s all kind of a nerdy risk-benefit analysis.The germs are out there. They’re not just in the air, they’re from a person. So maybe there’s a five-foot rule. If you go too close to somebody and they cough on you or they touch you with a germ, now your child can get sick. What do we do when we are faced with a fever or an illness? The first step is bringing the fever down and then doing a quick analysis. Is our child breathing faster? Are they lethargic? That really needs to be done quickly. But if your youngster perks up and plays after you bring down the fever, hopefully it’s more of a viral illness. Here at Mount Sinai Doctors in Brooklyn Heights, we have same day sick visits every day because we know that’s an emergency when your child gets sick. So, we’ll go over at each visit what to look for, when to worry, and when not to worry. But a high fever, fast breathing, true lethargy, repetitive vomiting —  this could be an emergency. So call us with any questions, and we’ll figure it out together.”

” There really is no schedule of sleep in the newborn period.  It’s developmentally led. In about three or four months, we can start to play our card. Follow the baby’s lead those first couple of months. B\y three or four months, you can really read their cues and learn them. A baby who is not hungry maybe shouldn’t be fed. So a newborn is feeding every two to three hours — even overnight because they need those calories. But the four-month-old isn’t always hungry. Yes, they’re teething, and they’re yelling at you. But you don’t have to feed them as much. So I look at it as getting that first stretch at night. Establish your bedtime routine. Read to them, perhaps take a bath, and then let’s try to get that bedtime going. That first stretch — whether it’s four to six hours — is your starting point and that sometimes does involve them waking and saying, “Hey, I’m awake and I need your help in going back to bed.” But maybe that’s the time to say “No, we need to have you self soothe and sleep learn” — if not sleep train. Yes, they might play their card and cry. It’s not simply the “cry it out” method that we promote. But we’ll do it together. We’ll figure them out. We’ll learn their cues, and we’ll try to get that stretch – so, hopefully by six or nine months, you’re maybe even seeing that ten to twelve magical hours of sleep, and you can return to being a normal person once again.”

“Measles and chicken pox infections are caused by viruses and very commonly happen in young children who have not had vaccinations against them. It is possible that even if you have had vaccinations that you can have an infection with measles or varicella, the name for chicken pox, when you’re older. These infections are often more severe than when they are gotten by young children. It’s very important to be immunized — both at one year old and then again at about age four. But if you haven’t been immunized, you can catch up in your adolescent years.”

“There are two general types of ear infections. There’s an outer ear infection, which is most commonly called a swimmer’s ear. You get it from swimming, and it’s pain in the outer ear. There’s also a middle ear infection, or otitis media. That’s when there’s an ear infection in the middle ear, which often causes fever and pain. The middle ear infection often needs to be treated by antibiotics. However it depends on the age of the child and how sick they are. The outer ear infection is often treated with ear drops. In order to determine the difference, the best thing to do is to schedule an appointment with a pediatrician who can take a look in your child’s ear. Often times, there is no infection. Sometimes there’s just fluid in the middle ear, which causes pain. Or a lot of babies will often pull at their ears from teething, and it is not, in fact, an ear infection.”