Healthy Baby Secrets

All the things you wish you knew during pregnancy.

• How can I optimize my baby’s health and development before she is born?
• What are the best foods to eat and the most important supplements to take to enhance my baby’s health?
• How can I reduce the risk of pre-term labor?

And so on.

As an integrative pediatrician, I knew that researchers were beginning to understand how to optimize a baby’s health prenatally and in early life. For instance, we know more and more about how to decrease the risk that a baby or child will develop conditions such as allergies, autism, and ADHD. We know which environmental toxins are harmful to the developing nervous system and which ones cause cancer. We know how to improve the quality of the gut microbiome to promote brain and body health.

However, I became acutely aware when I was pregnant, that future parents are unable to access this information readily, and if they are, it’s not typically early enough in their developing child’s life to make the greatest impact.

Why are future parents not getting this information in timely manner or at all? The reasons we are not getting this information is multifold and related to systemic issues in our medical system.

1) Our healthcare systemis set up in a way that is largely dictated by what insurers will pay for— which is mostly focused on disease management and problem identification. In this system, we are very good at placing band-aids on problems after they have occurred, rather than preventing, anticipating, and optimizing.

2) Most physicians are trained in this disease treatment paradigm, so they don’t typically have knowledge of health optimization and preventive tactics, unless they proactively seek out this type of training.

3) OB’s are incredible, but pregnant women don’t get a visit with an OB typically until they’re nearing the end of their first trimesters. By then, many pregnant women have already missed opportunities to implement some health-optimizing and preventive tactics for their babies. Additionally, OB care is largely focused on the health of the pregnancy and harm reduction. OB’s do not typically provide pediatric integrative health information that can help future parents optimize the health, brain, and body development of their child or how to prepare for life with a baby.

4) While families are thinking about or working on conceiving, they don’t have a pediatrician to consult about how to prepare the body for a healthy baby and pregnancy, even though there are plenty of things one can do in the preconception phase to set the body up optimally for a healthy baby. Even if these families had a pediatrician, the pediatric field at large is not focused on integrative preconception and prenatal health optimization and prevention. In fact, prenatal and preconception pediatrics is simply not considered a medical field at this point —and most pediatricians are not trained in this area.

I want to change all of this through a new medical service I am launching: Motherwit Integrative Medicine’s Healthy Baby Secrets program, which guides future and current parents through this healthcare gap and helps them cultivate exceptional body and mind health for their children, for life — from the earliest possible stages.

I made it my mission during my pregnancy to harness my integrative pediatrics expertise to become an expert in this sensitive, early phase of life—not only for myself but also for other expectant families in the future. I used my integrative pediatrics training, research background, and firsthand experience as a pregnant woman and mother to develop this new approach to pediatrics that starts when you have the idea to have a child—although families may connect with us at any stage.

MotherWit Integrative Medicine’s Healthy Baby Secrets program provides personalized, integrative pediatric medical guidance, spanning preconception, pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood. We are able to do this because we operate outside the rigid confines of the insurance system, which can prevent future parents from getting the proactive healthcare they need for their future and developing babies. To make it easy for busy families, online consultations are provided to families from the comfort of their own homes, using telehealth technology.

Through MotherWit Integrative Medicine’s Healthy Baby Secrets program, I want to create a revolution in the way pediatric health information is delivered to families. I dream that together, with families, we can create optimal health & wellness for life in our children and help them maximize their potential. I also hope that in the future, less women feel as lost as I did during pregnancy.

I welcome your thoughts on this subject and your requests for topics to address! Please use the contact us page to reach out.