How to Talk to Your Pediatrician About BLW with Mona Amin, DO

Mona Amin (0s):

Just because your pediatrician said no, that it doesn't mean that it's not possible. Absolutely. It's possible. Some pediatricians are great doctors, but they may not just be up to date on this. They may just have their own reservations because they don't have their child who did baby-led weaning. They don't know much about it.

Katie Ferraro (15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietician, college nutrition professor, and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leading you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Hey there. Welcome back. I am so excited about today's interview. It is one of my favorite people on the entire internet. Pediatrician, Mona Amin from Peds Doc Talk is joining me. Mona is an amazing resource for parents.

Katie Ferraro (56s):

She talks about all sorts of things in her content, like sleep safety and anxiety as parents, our growth and development for your children. But she is on the podcast today, talking about how to talk to your pediatrician about baby-led weaning. And that's because I get tons of questions from you guys about, oh my doctor's not on board with baby-led weaning or he or she doesn't think it works. Listen, in addition to being an actual pediatrician, doctor means also a relatively new mom who did baby-led weaning herself. Her son, Ryan just turned one. She actually started with traditional spoonfeeding, switched to baby-led weaning. She's going to be sharing a little bit about that in this episode. And if you're the only one in your family, who's onboard with baby-led weaning, I think you're going to love her story too, because Dr means husband.

Katie Ferraro (1m 36s):

He's an ER, doctor totally freaked out by baby-led weaning. At first, her mom wasn't on board with it, her mother-in-law wasn't on board with it. They eventually all got on board with it. She sharing kind of some of the language and the tweaks and what she did to make that happen that I think you might find useful in your own families. But if you're also struggling with talking to your pediatrician about baby-led weaning, or maybe you've heard things from the doctor like baby-led weaning is not safe, or baby-led weaning does not work. We're both going to be breaking down those fallacies in this interview episode as well. So I think you guys are going to love Dr. Mona Amin. She's one of the most real personalities. I know real in a sense like a real life mom, juggling work, home life, but laughing through it all and having a good time. I love her content.

Katie Ferraro (2m 16s):

She goes by Peds Doc Talk, which I think is just perfect for her and all of her channels and platforms because she's really a doctor and a mom. Who's just so easy to talk to. And to be honest, to talk about issues that are sometimes a little bit uncomfortable and that's what we're going to be doing today, because not everybody wants to have the conversation with their pediatrician. Hey, I've decided to forego traditional spoonfeeding and I want to do baby-led weaning. Dr. Mona Amin is going to show us how so with no further ado. Here's how to talk to your pediatrician about baby-led weaning with Dr. Mona Amin from paeds talk doc. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Amin.

Mona Amin (2m 48s):

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited that we could connect. I love your Instagram page and what you're doing for parents. So I'm so excited to be on.

Katie Ferraro (2m 57s):

Well, I love your Instagram page. I love what you're doing for parents. I feel like a stocker. I know everything about your son for our audience who might not be already following you on Instagram or not know you yet. Could you share a little bit about your background and the work that you do as a pediatrician?

Mona Amin (3m 12s):

Yeah, so I have been a general pediatrician for five years going on six years, always in private practice. I've worked in New York city and now I'm in Florida and I love being a general pediatrician. You know, my goal as an outpatient pediatrician is to help parents downstream and downstream, meaning before problems arise before they get issues. I want to talk about things in the first five years, right? And for me it's healthy sleep habits. It's healthy eating habits, a positive body image, and also how we approach stress. So my platform really tries to look at all of those things. Obviously, that's why we're going to be talking about baby-led weaning, because I love that concept for creating good eating habits. So that's kind of my background.

Mona Amin (3m 54s):

I am a DO physician, so not many people know the difference between MDs and DOs. So both of us go through the undergraduate work and medical school, but DO medical school or osteopathic medical school in the United States, we learn the whole body. So when we're learning about headaches, we're also learning about environmental triggers. We're learning about nutrition. We're learning about everything related to a system issue or a problem. And I love the way that we were trained. So everything is a whole body system will have we thought about the impact food can have or the environment or stress to a problem. So it's what we call that whole mind, body spirit medicine, which I love.

Mona Amin (4m 35s):

I am partial to DOs mainly because I am one. When I say that I do seek out dos. It doesn't mean that I am against MDs. My own husband is an amazing MD, but I just find that the philosophy makes a lot of sense DOs to me, especially in general, pediatrics and outpatient, they just tend to be more welcoming. The bedside manner is more like this. It's just, I love it. So of course I, I am one. So I'm going to be talking like this, but that's basically the difference.

Katie Ferraro (4m 59s):

And I think that's important for parents to hear a lot of our audiences. Like some of them are still pregnant. Like they're learning everything they can about babies, et cetera. And I don't think they realize like you have the option when you're choosing a pediatrician to also consider working with the DO. So I'm so glad that I connected with you because I think you could just tell again, like from your Instagram and your online persona, which is so real, like it is a little bit different, I think, than what a lot of people would expect from your traditional pediatrics.

Mona Amin (5m 22s):

Yeah. And I find that a lot of MDs and I'm, again, this is not empty bashing. This is just my understanding of my colleagues. And, you know, MDs are amazing, but they tend to fall into a very well have to do this a certain way versus looking at big picture. And that goes with pediatrics, like baby-led weaning, for example, right? Like baby-led weaning has been around for decades and also in other countries. And the AP had to create a statement saying, Hey, okay, we support it if this better, the other, when so many other countries have been doing it. So I find that a lot of the organizations need to kind of come into the modern sense of parenting and say, okay, what can do, how can we do this in a safe way? How can we educate parents on safe sleep?

Mona Amin (6m 5s):

How can we educate parents on eating with baby-led weaning so that it meets their desires, you know, versus, okay, you can't do this. This has never been done before because parenting is evolving and we need to evolve with it.

Katie Ferraro (6m 16s):

I have a quick question from your osteopathic medical school training, like I'm a registered dietician. I teach in the nurse practitioner program at UC San Francisco. And so we teach a lot of primary care practitioners. And I oftentimes remind them that listen, more than 90% of primary care providers in the United States have never taken a dedicated nutrition class. And I tell my parents that like, after you take my one hour free baby-led weaning workshop, like you actually have more dedicated nutrition education than your own pediatrician probably does. And that's just the reality in your training. Did you guys get more nutrition than you would say your typical MD does?

Mona Amin (6m 47s):

So in medical school we did, but I will say, I think it's important in residency because in residency, for example, pediatric residency, I need the nutrition for pediatric nutrition in medical school. It was broad nutrition aspects. And then you kind of forget it because you're not practicing it. Right? So I think we need to be putting more nutrition education in residency. I got a lot of nutrition on the different kinds of formula, things like that, but I'll be honest. I think it can be a lot better. A lot of my interest in nutrition as a pediatrician came from my own desire to learn, right, my own desire to look at things and thanks to social media also, and your account. And so many other accounts, I'm able to kind of learn and say, Hey, this makes a lot of sense.

Mona Amin (7m 27s):

How can I put this into my practice and say, okay, this makes sense in an overall picture, when should you worry? Does this cause any problems? It's just a nice thing that I've started to do more of just out of intrest.

Katie Ferraro (7m 37s):

And I love your content as well, because in addition to being obviously a credentialed professional, you also are a mom. And I think for a lot of pediatricians the first time they really ever, and I don't mean this with any disrespect, but take baby-led weaning seriously is when they realize like, huh, shoving the spoon of food down my child's throat, doesn't feel entirely natural. And patients do ask a lot of questions about baby-led weaning, and oftentimes physicians kind of poo poo it. And we're going to get to that, but backing it up to Instagram, I was just curious. I know you've been a pediatrician for a while yet. Your Instagram account is relatively new. I follow you on Instagram. You're @pedsdoctalk, could you just tell us what was the impetus for starting? Like you have a really robust social media platform, which not a lot of pediatricians do. So what's the story behind that?

Mona Amin (8m 18s):

Yeah. So I was burnt out in my nine to five or eight to five job. I was feeling like I was a hamster on a wheel where I was just seeing patient after patient, after patient. And I actually started pizza doc talk because I was burnt out and you're like, well, why would you put on more work when you're burnt out? I just felt like I wasn't able to give my all in my job and I needed a platform to be myself and my authentic self. So I ended up starting Peds Dock Talk. This was March of 2019. And it was out of a desire to share my content with the world. I was just getting so many parents coming in with the exact same questions. Wait, you don't have to medicate fever. Wait, what is baby-led? Weaning, wait, what is this? And I was like, I need to create a platform where can give all of this information, which I have put together through my time as a pediatrician in the outpatient world.

Mona Amin (9m 5s):

And then I got pregnant and then I had my son and of course my platform did blossom after I had my son. I get it. People want that personal aspect too, which I am so grateful to give both of those worlds, but that's kind of where it came from burnout and my desire to just really educate on those repetitive topics that are stressing parents out. And I don't want them to stress out because so much of this is just looking at the big picture and saying, okay, I'm going to do it like this. This is what a doctor says. I also am going to read other resources too. And I feel more confident in my role as a parent.

Katie Ferraro (9m 35s):

I love the content you cover. Like I know you're doing a lot of COVID stuff right now. And I was looking at your stories last night and you're like, listen, I don't want to like only do COVID content, but it's definitely top of mine. And just being really real, like, listen, my husband and I both work. We need someone to help take care of our children. And like, it's so nice to hear that from a pediatrician to like, oh wow, we all are kind of dealing with the same struggles, especially with small children where they're trying to work at home or stay at home or do both. So I just, I love your page again. You guys, it's at @pedsdoctalk. If you're looking for a really great valuable resource and it's just real life insight on Instagram, Dr. Ameen stuff is amazing. Thank you so much. Okay. When parents come in or parents come into your community, right? You were on the hamster wheel, like you said. So you've seen tons of parents with many similar issues when it comes to like emotional and social development.

Katie Ferraro (10m 19s):

Like sometimes these things are out of context of what we normally think of. Like when I go to my doctor's office, I'm like, I'm going to leave here with like, I'm going to know where they are on the growth chart. And then I'm gonna know what their iron level is. Like. It's very tangible objective measurements. And then when feeding comes up, I think a lot of times pediatricians don't know how to deal with it. Cause you have 10 minutes to talk about like a million different things. How do you cover all of these important topics with parents without overwhelming them? Because you've already talked like sleep COVID body image, feeding, like that's a lot of stuff to deal with and parents still get overwhelmed. What's your approach for helping them?

Mona Amin (10m 49s):

I think the biggest thing is at every visit, right? So two months, four months, six months, nine months in my head, I have big things that I want to talk about. And that is just based on my practice. Different pediatricians. Don't always do that. I agree with you so many pediatricians, just do the nitty-gritty. Okay. Are there checking boxes, right? Like, is your child meeting the milestones? Are we going to do vaccines or whatever it is, there's always this check box. What's your child eating. It's more questions than it is guidance. And I am more of a guidance type of pediatrician. So my families know that when I go in at two months, I'm going to be talking about stretching of feeds at night, what that looks like, you know, at four months, I'm going to be talking about preparing for the introduction of solids at six months. You know, I like to talk about it early and what you're going to be looking out for six months, I'm talking about sleep.

Mona Amin (11m 34s):

I'm bringing up different things as the child is aging. I wish I had an hour and a half with every patient because I could get through that whole checklist of things. So it's really hard as pediatricians because a lot of times we just don't have that time. Hence why I started Peds Doc Talk because we have so much, we want to talk about even the good pediatricians that really want to talk about all of it. Don't get the time in modern medicine because of, you know, time that we with our patients. So really comes to what are the big things I want to get out. And what are the big concerns the family has, right? Do they have concerns about feeding? Do they have concerns about sleep? And it really should be that sort of, you know, let me ask you, and then you asked me so that we can get through the visit.

Katie Ferraro (12m 12s):

Okay. So when we talk about baby-led weaning like, you know what it is, but a lot of pediatricians don't. So one of my biggest pet peeves is parents come to me and say, I want to do baby-led weaning. But my pediatrician says either a, it doesn't work or B it isn't safe. So we know that the research supports a baby-led approach to starting solids. And when they're talking about safety, a lot of times it's, they're mistaken about choking risk. And the research shows us babies who do baby-led weaning no higher risk of choking than our traditionally spoonfed babies provided that the parents are educated about reducing choking risks. So like, I know what you're up against in your profession. What advice do you give to parents who are like, listen, my own pediatrician, doesn't support baby-led weaning, but then the reasons why they don't support it are outdated or misinformed.

Mona Amin (12m 55s):

I think if your child is sitting independently, neurologically has no concern, right? Obviously medically, if there's some concern that the doctor's worried about solid foods, right? That the child only can be on periods. And that's not a lot of babies, but that does happen. So if medically your child is able to sit and meets all the requirements to start, baby-led weaning, I would encourage you to look at other resources like obviously baby led weaning, other resources to find out what works for you and your family. Right? I don't want you to think that just because your pediatrician said no, that it doesn't mean that it's not possible. Absolutely it's possible, but it's important to be informed. And I don't want you to think that that means that you can't go to your pediatrician anymore. Right? Some pediatricians are great doctors, but they may not just be up to date on this. They may just have their own reservations because they don't have their child who had baby-led, weaning.

Mona Amin (13m 39s):

They don't know much about it. And so they say no, because they don't know how to explain to you that, Hey, I don't know much about it. Right. There is some times where if we don't know the answer, we just say, oh no, you shouldn't do it. But maybe explain why. Well, I don't want you to do it mainly because I don't know much about it, you know, but maybe look at resources. And if you feel like it's the best decision for your family, then you can do it. Right. So I really think it's important to ask your doctor, Hey, is there any medical reason why you're concerned that I can't do this approach? If they say it's the choking, I want you to also remember what we're talking about. That with proper precautions, it is not any more of an increase in choking risks. I completely agree with that. And it's just important to ask them why more, right? Rather than just taking it as, okay, well, we're done here because I think it's important to have that open conversation with a doctor that you plan on seeing the next time, because at nine months, if you're doing baby-led weaning and you're with a doctor who doesn't support it, you want to say, well, why aren't you supporting it?

Mona Amin (14m 31s):

Why, you know, it's nice to be on the same page and educate that doctor too and say, look, this is something really cool. Let me know if you want resources about it. I think it will benefit some of your families because I think that's how we evolve. As doctors too.

Katie Ferraro (14m 44s):

We did an episode with Amy Brown. Who's a big baby-led weaning researcher out of the UK. And the episode was called the evidence behind baby-led weaning with Amy Brown. That's at episode 70 you guys. And there are some research articles in show notes for that, that are her review articles that she's written where a lot of parents will actually take those to the pediatrician. Like, listen, here's a really quick review article that summarize all of the research that supports a baby-led approach to feeding. Again, not every pediatrician is going to be receptive to that, but some are they just, maybe haven't seen the current research and there is this real and emerging body of literature that supports a baby-led approach to starting solids. But again, if you're head down in the clinic day in and day out, maybe not an academic type of pediatrician, you might not be inclined to know about that. So I also encourage parents to be proactive.

Katie Ferraro (15m 25s):

You know, you know, your pediatrician and your relationship with them, but it doesn't hurt to have these conversations like you were saying. Yeah, that's great. Can we talk a little bit about iron? Because I think it's one thing, like a lot of times, you know, pediatricians know the importance of iron and baby's iron stores that they got at the tail end of pregnancy from mom. It does start to dissipate around six months. Great. That's about the time we start solid foods, focus should be on iron containing foods. A lot of pediatricians would say, okay, you need to start with iron-fortified rice cereal. Well, if you're doing a baby-led approach, you can like take that advice, which is, yes, iron is important, but you can adapt it to implementation or the way that you're thinking it's going to work in your family, which might be with like trying real foods. So what I want to ask you is in your family, when you were starting solids with your son, did you do baby-led weaning?

Katie Ferraro (16m 6s):

Did you do traditional weaning? Like what was your own personal experience? If you don't mind sharing?

Mona Amin (16m 11s):

So we ended up just doing purees. I knew that I wanted to do baby-led weaning. Ryan led the show at around six and a half months. He was refusing me, feeding him. He was like, I don't want this. What are you doing? Screaming bloody murder. At that point, he was also sitting and I was like, this is time he's ready. He was sitting independently. He was grabbing at everything. And we went to baby-led weaning. And since then, we've kind of never looked back. Obviously we still introduced purees and he spoonfeed himself, but I am such a big fan of it. I'm a big fan of a family deciding if they want to do a little blend of it, if they want to do that too, based on the needs of their family. But I liked the concept of baby-led weaning. I just think it's so awesome. Ryan is an amazing eater. I know it can change at any point, but I truly believe the concept that we've created is going to allow him to remain a decent eater with all those picky eating phases that can happen for toddlers.

Katie Ferraro (17m 3s):

Absolutely. It's one of the strengths of baby-led weaning is that there, it certainly will not prevent picky eating. There's some degree of picky eating that will set in usually in the second year of life, but it certainly can mitigate it. And so a lot of parents who are listening have an older child who is a picky eater and they may have done traditional spoon-feeding. And they're looking for an alternative the second time around because they don't want to deal with the picky eating again. Baby-led weaning. If you're raising an independent eater who likes and accepts a wide variety of foods, you've basically solved your own problem, which I know is what you guys are seeing with Ryan right now.

Mona Amin (17m 31s):

Yeah, I think it's so great. And I know we'll talk more about it. I just think it's something that, again, I was so happy to be on this episode because I just want more people to hear that there are benefits of it. And I don't want people if that's what they want to do. I don't want them to be deterred because someone said that that can't happen, right? Their, a pediatrician or a family member or whatever. It's definitely something that you can pursue if you want to do it.

Katie Ferraro (17m 52s):

Has your family been supportive of baby-led weaning?

Mona Amin (17m 55s):

So my husband was scared. My husband's an ER doctor. He found it really scary. He just was like, wow, I don't know if he can swallow that. I'm like, well, he's not, we're, we're cutting it in the safe portions. My nanny is an older nanny. She's 69. And so she had a harder time also. So how I kind of made them come around is if I were there for a meal, I would show them what I'm doing. I would show them how to cut everything. And I would say, Hey, look, if you're not comfortable, it's not the end of the world. If you don't want to do it, I just, I had to meet them halfway. Right? With time, they got so comfortable with it. My mother-in-law was not a fan of it. She kept saying, he's a baby. Why aren't you letting him be a baby? You're letting him making him grow up too fast. And I was like, mom, he's capable of this.

Mona Amin (18m 35s):

I'm not forcing anything on him. Watch he's going to do it. And then I would show him or show her. And he, she was like, wow, okay. Same thing with my mom and dad, they came to stay for three months. They were a little skeptical, but they saw how it works. They saw the safety of it. They saw how I chop everything up or slice everything down and my mom would follow suit. So it really was a lot of them observing a lot of the reassurance and a little bit of balance of saying, Hey, look, if you introduce a spoon to my son, I'm not going to yell at you. Okay, it's fine. But look at what he can do without you putting that spoon in his mouth. And I would sit there and I would show my mom what he can do by just waiting and grabbing the spoon himself. So it requires a lot of patience.

Mona Amin (19m 14s):

It requires a lot of not yelling at that person and be like, why don't you just trust me? Just really just understanding. They're also coming from a place of love as a parent or grandparent, and they need to be taught because they're not used to it. So that's kind of how we approached it. And now everyone's like, Brian is such a great eater. I've never seen a 10 month old feed himself. My mom is like amazed that he eats everything like Indian food, Thai food, like this kid will eat anything. So again, it's because of our exposure and him not putting any pressure on him. It's that combination that's really helped.

Katie Ferraro (19m 45s):

And I think you drove home and really important point. I encourage parents to do the same is that whoever is the primary caregiver and most of the time it's moms. And if you're the one who's setting the stage for feeding, you need to personally get comfortable with your baby's ability to feed a few different foods at first on your own, without input from anyone else. This is not a three ring circus. I don't want the dog in there. And the in-laws, if they're going to stress you out, you one-on-one get comfortable with your baby. Do a few foods. And then seeing really is believing. Cause you can turn around and show your mother, your mother-in-law your nanny. This is how the baby does it. And once they see the baby doing it and they realize the baby is capable of it, they get on board. And then half the time they end up like taking credit for it, like, look how amazing this.

Mona Amin (20m 25s):

Exactly.

Katie Ferraro (20m 25s):

What we want is everyone on the same page eventually. But please know if like everyone in your team or your tribe is not totally on the same page as you at the beginning. That's very typical. Even Dr. Amin is like my own family. Wasn't at first, but fast forward four months later, like everyone is on the same page, which is what we want helping to raise Ryan as an independent person slash an independent eater. And you are still letting him be a child. I've seen him. He's an adorable child.

Mona Amin (20m 49s):

Thank you.

Katie Ferraro (20m 50s):

All right. I have another question. And it's back in line with your in pediatrician. So we've asked this question of every pediatrician on the podcast. If you don't want to answer it, you don't have to, but why do pediatricians tell parents to wait three to five days between trying new foods when there's absolutely no evidence to support that guidance? Like do they whisper in your ear at medical school? Like what's happening.

Mona Amin (21m 7s):

This was actually taught to me in residency, but as I got out of residency and I'm so grateful to have worked in two different practices because by working in two different practices and not just going to one practice after residency, I learned different things from different places, right? I worked in New York city in Manhattan and then I work in Florida and there is just a cultural difference with the doctors in New York that go to the doctors at this practice. And you're right. There is no literature to support that, right? The allergies are going to happen typically in the first hour to two hours after an introduction of food. Yes, there is a small chance of a delayed allergic reaction, but that is very small. I introduce Ryan food very quickly. Meaning morning, I would introduce egg, maybe not the same day.

Mona Amin (21m 50s):

Would I introduce peanut the next day I introduced peanut. There was no three to five days for me pediatrician say that because maybe they think that that's what they still should be doing because that's what was taught to them in residency. And it's not real life applicable or maybe they really do believe it. You know, I, I can't speak to every other pediatrician, but I will say if you know the signs to look out for, you can always monitor there's no, if you were introduced your child three different things. That's okay. I've had families do that. And the child had a reaction. The parent gave dairy eggs and peanut butter in like a matter of two days. And then the child had a rash. I just backtracked and said, okay, let's isolate all of these. It's not the end of the world. If your child has a reaction and we have to now look at, okay, well, what was it of those three things, right?

Mona Amin (22m 33s):

Yes. You definitely want to kind of follow the guidance. If your family has a strong history of allergies, right? If there's a really strong history of allergies in the family, child has really severe eczema. Maybe your pediatrician will want you to be slow on introduction of allergenic foods. But if it's an otherwise healthy child with no medical concerns, you do not technically have to wait those three to five days. And it's not something that is found in literature. You're right. I was taught it. And then as I went out of medical school or residency, and as I became a doctor and as I became a mom, I was like, I can't, I don't even remember, what day is it? How am I going to remember what food I gave? When? So that's literally the mommy aspect of it. I'm like I gave it I didn't. Okay. We're just going to try something new. And that's how we approached it.

Katie Ferraro (23m 13s):

Two other episodes, you guys are kind of dovetail on what Dr. Amin is saying. We did an episode called what do I do if my baby has an allergic reaction with Dr. Ron Sunon, he's a pediatrician who also specializes in food allergies. That's episode 58. If you want to check it out, cause you should be educated about what to look out for. But in another episode, we had Kareena Venter. Who's a PhD dietician, why you don't need to wait three to five days between new foods. And she does all ton of research in pediatric food, allergy risk and development. And she's kind of on the same boat. Like, listen, there's no research to support this. The AAP does say, wait a few days. And like, you know, when your kids say like, you know, what's a few, like it's three to five, but there's no hard and fast that says you need to do it. And on the flip side, we know the research shows that babies who have the greatest diet diversity are the ones more likely to be independent eaters and the less likely to be picky eaters.

Katie Ferraro (23m 59s):

So if you waited five days between every new food, it would take you 500 days to get to a hundred food. At which point your babies almost to, when you could easily do a hundred foods in under five months, if you're doing one new food a day. So I know you said you don't track it, but we have a lot of parents in our community who are doing my a hundred first foods challenge and they do track it to stay organized. Cause it is hard to remember and if you're not tracking it, a lot of parents think their babies have a lot of foods under their belt, but they're like most typically spoonfed babies who maybe only have 10 or 15 different foods. So it is a good idea to keep track of that stuff. If you can, because you want your baby to see as many different foods. And it's so wonderful that you guys did the allergenic foods early and often, because that can be stressful. Sometimes it can be hard to remember.

Katie Ferraro (24m 39s):

It can be like, which ones did I already do? But the research does show us early and often introduction of those foods does help prevent food allergy.

Mona Amin (24m 47s):

Oh yeah. And we were very methodical with the early allergen exposure. Meaning every day we rotated the different ones. And obviously now that he's doing baby-led, weaning, those foods are coming in, right? Like peanut butter, eggs, tree nuts that's coming into would be almond butter or peanut butter or, you know, obviously regular eggs. So definitely nice to monitor in that aspect. And yes, I agree with that diversity. I mean we basically meal prepped. We diversify these spices, the ethnic foods, all the different things that we eat also. Right. So that was really helpful. And like I said, my mom was just shocked that this child eats regular spice level of Indian food. I mean, he eats what we eat. Like he, and my mom's like, how is it? Okay. I'm like, he we've just exposed him. And he loves it. I mean, he loves all the food we eat. He won't eat a five alarm chili because I won't give it to him.

Mona Amin (25m 31s):

But he eats pretty much what we eat. If not a better eater than my husband.

Katie Ferraro (25m 34s):

I love interviewing parents who are also like professionals too, because it's just so nice to hear you dealing with like the real life parenting stuff as well, where some especially Indian grandparents will be like, why aren't you feeding them Indian food? Like in India, babies would eat Indian food. In Ethiopia, babies eat Ethiopian food. And like the reality is we sometimes get, especially with the standard American diet, like, oh, babies only need to eat bland white rice cereal. It's like, no, they don't. There's lots of other foods that have iron in them. Do you get Ryan's iron checked regularly? Have his iron levels been good without divulging your baby's personal info?

Mona Amin (26m 4s):

Yes. I don't mind sharing that. Yeah. So usually iron levels are checked at the one-year mark and his was rock solid at 13. And yeah, that was with all that we've done. Obviously he is a great veggie eater. We never did cereals. We never did cereals. I've made fresh oatmeal, but yeah, we never did the baby cereals out of just preference. And we gave him spinach and green leafy vegetables and he has eaten all that. And my son was formula fed. I talk about that more on the podcast or my podcast and my Instagram, but yeah, we transitioned him to water. After six months with meals continued the formula. Now he's on cow's milk and his iron's been rock solid. Awesome.

Katie Ferraro (26m 38s):

And that's another, when you go to your pediatrician, you do have to be proactive. I'm really surprised. Every time we post about regular iron checks or iron screening, a lot of parents will be like, my doctor's never even checked my baby's iron. It's like, otherwise you're going to be stressing and worrying. If your babies get enough iron, you can actually check these biomarkers to make sure that X, Y, or Z levels are fine. But sometimes you do have to mention it to your pediatrician because especially in North America, it's not standard practice. They're supposed to be screening, but not every single pediatrician does. And I'm wondering if you've seen that. I'm so shocked

Mona Amin (27m 8s):

Because I've heard that by the way, but I am just shocked because in residency and my two jobs that I've had now, I mean, those are just three places, but they're in three different parts of the country. They all did screenings at one year and 18 months and two years. So when I found out that a lot of parents weren't getting this done for their children and like now wanting to do some research on it because I literally it's been standard of practice for everywhere I've worked, which has been just three places because you're right. It is important for development. And we don't want it to be strikingly low where we need to do supplementation. That's why we check it. So one year for sure, 18 months or two years, and if it's normal, then you don't need to do repetitive checks. We don't need that unless there's a concern that you had, but that's really the screenings that are, I think, should be required.

Mona Amin (27m 49s):

And it's a finger poke on blood draw is ideal. Also, if it's really low on the finger poke, but these tests are pretty accurate. I've checked mine, like, cause I go to my OB and I've checked mine. And then the next day I've checked it at the office and it's pretty, it's very accurate. So these tests are pretty cool and it's quick, it's just a finger poke.

Katie Ferraro (28m 5s):

And they're cheap too. So it's not like overly expensive. Like the machine itself. I got to a point where I have seven small children and because I work in baby-led weaning my doctor, I could take them all at the same time in, can you check everyone's iron? He's like, why don't you just buy the HemoCue tech machine yourself at home? It's only $300 then like I like to come here because my doctor wasn't super on board with baby-led weaning very early on. And then, you know, when the iron levels are continually coming back normal and their weight, like all the things that they worry about, which would be growth faltering or nutrient gaps, those things they're not recognized or realized when you're doing baby-led weaning and the doctor realizes, oh gosh, they're eating real food. And their iron is fine. And they're tracking on their growth curve. Like I love to use that as kind of a talking point with my pediatrician, which is like, no, we never did cereals.

Katie Ferraro (28m 45s):

Like, oh, well what's eating for iron. Well, we're having meat. We do egg. We do lentils. And you know, just to remind them that there are other foods besides iron-fortified white rice cereal that does have iron, like what do we do prior to the advent of commercial baby food in, you know, like the 1900s you fed your baby real foods that contain iron. So you mentioned your podcast and I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. I know it's called the Peds Doc Talk. Who do you interview? What topics do you do? Why'd you get into doing a podcast?

Mona Amin (29m 12s):

Yeah, so I kind of do what you're doing, but I do more of a broad pediatrician standpoint, right? So I get experts in the field of pediatrics, whether it's mothers now I'm doing for season two, I'm getting a lot of mothers off my Instagram to come up and share experiences. They've had what they would want to share with the world. I get sleep consultants. I get ENT. I get allergy immunologists. I get all different types of specialists. I have a big database of all the people that I want to interview. And I'm going to be putting you on there. I hope you know that. Oh, I love to. I'm putting you on the spot now, but yeah, it's a great podcast. It's been doing really great. I'm actually now starting a YouTube channel to do more of my solo educational content on YouTube and gear my podcasting just for interviews, just because I liked the format for interviews, but I do not like the format for my solo educational topics.

Mona Amin (29m 56s):

I just feel like I'm rambling into a phone with no one talking to me. So I'm transitioning to YouTube for my solo content, but it has been such a great thing. Parenting, health, and wellness basically is the goal here and that comes in many forms, right? So there's so many topics to go over and I'm just so excited about season two that launched today, actually the day we're recording this.

Katie Ferraro (30m 16s):

And I think the, the interview format too is really interesting because especially during COVID like, you can get almost any guests you want at this point because everybody is home and people know how to use the technology. And that's been really awesome that we've been able, we kind of have the same thing, like a database as to you with like, you know, dream guests and it's attainable because these people want to share their voice on your platform as well because parents do need to hear this information. And you know, doing one to many is in many ways, a lot more, it's a better use of technology. It's a lot better use of your time. Like you were saying, you were repeating the same thing, one-on-one and appointments, but like, look how many people you reach through your Instagram, through your YouTube, through your podcasts that otherwise wouldn't get to hear your message, which by the way is totally inspiring and uplifting. And if you could just maybe to, to round it out at the end here, tell us what your channels are and where we can go to learn more about your content and your mission.

Mona Amin (31m 4s):

So everything is called Peds Doc Talk. And on my Instagram it's Peds Doc Talk, P E D S D O C T A L K. People commonly say, pen, stop talk. But thank you for saying Peds Doc Talk like pediatrician. So that's on Instagram. My podcast is the Peds Doc Talk podcast available wherever you access podcasts. And then my YouTube channel, which I'm going to release the first couple episodes about fever and milk and plant-based alternatives. That's going to be coming in a couple of weeks from the recording of this. So you probably may be out by the time you listened to this, but that's Peds Doc Talk TV on YouTube. And again, this is just a mission to share all this educational content. I share a lot of my personal mommy-hood experiences on my Instagram.

Mona Amin (31m 46s):

I'm really in my stories, a lot talking about daycare and my son and stress I have about, you know, COVID and the real life pediatrician moms stuff. So I really love the space. I love my followers. I love the connections I've made through my podcast and what I've learned through the podcasting that I've done. So, yeah, I'm so excited for all this to come in 2021.

Katie Ferraro (32m 4s):

So I wouldn't have linked all of your channels on the show notes for this episode. And you guys can find that at blwpodcast.com, Dr. Amin, thank you so much for joining us. This was a fabulous to have you on.

Mona Amin (32m 12s):

Thank you such a great conversation. I can't wait for you to be on my podcast. Really, it was such a great talk.

Katie Ferraro (32m 20s):

I can't wait either. Yeah. All right. Thanks. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Dr. Mona Amin. Again, she's one of my most favorite people on the entire internet. She's on Instagram at @pedsdoctalk. Her podcast is the Peds Doc Talk podcast. I'll link up all of her important platforms, links, et cetera. So you can find her and learn more about her work on the show notes for this episode at blwpodcast.com/96. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. See you next time.