Carlos Gonzalez It is the pediatrician that thousands of Spanish families and the Spanish-speaking world look at when they face the possibility of changing the social paradigms that refer to the raising of their children. Today we publish your interview for babies and more.
Carlos GonzalezHe is also an active lecturer and participates in the media giving interviews and answering questions, always with his personal, direct and forceful style. But above all with the security that gives knowledge about the issues to be addressed.
Babies and more have enjoyed the opportunity to open our cycle of interviews precisely with him and, since we have been flooded with many questions, we have tried to summarize our concerns and those of the readers, without forgetting that, many of the questions that You have referred us to specific cases, we must try to answer them in the future and thus offer readers an interactive, participatory space that best responds to your concerns.
Carlos is a father as well as a pediatrician. Fatherhood is one of the topics we wanted to talk to him.
Has being a parent changed your initial ideas as a pediatrician?
Not exactly, because I was a father before being a pediatrician. Being parents has changed my ideas as a human being, some absurd prejudices that I shared with most of society for having heard them since childhood. Pediatricians study the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia or meningitis and that kind of thing, but normally we do not study nor does anyone explain to us where a child has to sleep, if it is necessary to take it in his arms, if he has to eat it all or how to raise it and educate it. And yet parents insist on asking us these things. They must understand that the ideas of a pediatrician on these issues do not usually come from the medical school or the scientific books he has read, but from the society in which he lives and from his family tradition.
What do you think the father's role in breastfeeding and parenting should be?
And what should be the role of the mother? No one has ever asked me. And instead, they have often asked me about the role of the father. Mosquea a little. What happens, that mothers have freedom and ability to decide what they do, but fathers are so dumb that we have to stick to a role? Let each parent do what he sees fit.
Carlos, as I explained at the beginning of the article, does not go through the branches but does not intend to indicate to anyone how they should live.
We reach a point where we know that he has a very clear stance and that not everyone shares: vaccination. Carlos on numerous occasions we have read it defending the official vaccination and pointing out that there is no proven scientific reason that guarantees that the possible side effects are more harmful than abandoning the current policy. Moreover, we know that he works on a work about it.
When will your expected book on vaccination be finished?
There are a few months left. But in the meantime, an advance: do not be fooled, and vaccinate your child according to the official vaccination schedule.
Breastfeeding is one of the topics on which he goes to ask for guidance. For many years the same professionals have pointed out the low incidence of breastfeeding in our country and many support groups, coordinated with them, have done an intense work of information and support.
Why is the breastfeeding rate in Spain so low?
Well, actually, although there are no statistics, I suspect that it is not so low anymore. It has increased a lot in recent years.
The introduction of complementary feeding is one of the main concerns of parents, who find that their babies do not eat the recommended amounts or refuse certain foods and preparations. Likewise, the age of the introduction of these complementary foods to milk is accompanied by different recommendations from each center, or from a start prior to the six months recommended by WHO.
How to act on this? Really what should a baby eat and when do you have to start offering additional foods to milk? Despite the general guidelines, the casuistry is very varied and we wanted to ask for a general orientation to reassure us.
When should we start giving any food other than milk to babies?
It is advisable to start offering them other foods after six months. Offer, which is not the same as "plugging in." Normal food, decent food, without crushing, and allowing them to grab it and take it to their mouths.
Breastfeeding is not always easy for mothers who want to perform it. However, our society is not prepared to give them answers and they encounter premature weaning, difficult breastfeeding and feelings of loneliness and misunderstanding.
Where can a mother go who wishes to continue breastfeeding and has problems or doubts?
To a group of mothers (www.fedalma.org). To friends and family who have breastfed. There are also more and more health professionals with knowledge to support mothers in breastfeeding issues.
When we have a baby, their pockets are one of the things that parents observe with the greatest concern. Lactating babies do not always make bowel movements daily, they even spend several days without making them.
What is constipation in an infant and when should we worry about changes in your stool?
Constipation, the same as in an adult, consists of making hard balls. Babies with exclusive breastfeeding usually make soft poop, but sometimes they only do it every several days (or weeks).
And the age of weaning, what a problem, even for those who have reached the age of two recommended by at least WHO. The usual comment is that breast milk no longer feeds or is useless, and that can lead to errors if these comments are ignored.
What does breast milk provide to children after two years?
Well the same as before: proteins, lipids, lactose, vitamins, calcium, immunoglobulins, hormones, enzymes ... hundreds of ingredients.
Mothers who breastfeed and have a second pregnancy are here with a new barrier, the general advice of weaning because of presumed dangers for the unborn. The reasons for not breastfeeding in pregnancy or tandem are personal, but we wanted to ask if there is any truth in the dangers to the baby in the womb. Carlos, here, is blunt.
Are there medical contraindications to breastfeeding while pregnant?
Do not
Also, and continuing to breastfeed, we often find mothers worried about the intensity of the demand of the children, fearing that their milk is not good or that the child can get soaked. The general recommendation of the experts is to breastfeed on demand, day and night, to maintain adequate production and nutrition of the baby.
The old rules of breastfeeding every three hours or not letting them breast more than 10 or 15 minutes are largely discarded, but still have social validity.
So again we ask him and we find an equally blunt answer, without nuances because it is this subject there are none.
Should we put some schedule to the chest?
Do not
We reach education and upbringing, in which behavioral methods are used and promoted that aim to modify the natural behavior of children through the imposition of guidelines.
When I read about them I shiver thinking that those who apply them, and that they do it also thinking without a doubt about the well-being of their children, would feel very different if, when they reached old age or the inability to fend for themselves, they would receive them .
What do you think in general about behavioral methods in raising children?
We should not use with children methods that we would not like to apply to ourselves.
And to finish the great pending issue of our society, the repeated reconciliation, which means that mothers and fathers must delegate many of the hours of raising their children to third parties or institutions, in order to work. Governments boast of the nursery places they create, but leave aside some measures that allow economic survival and access to work not to contradict the need of families to grow together and spend more time together.
It is proposed that the best conciliation measure is the nursery, is it the best option for children?
What measures would help to truly improve work-life balance?
Reconciling family and work life means, it should mean, "do both at the same time." Like the African mother who works the land or sells in the market with her son behind her back. Like our great-grandparents, who helped their parents in the field or in the workshop since childhood. But in our society we have completely separated family and work life, we do not allow babies or older children to enter factories and offices. The nursery is not a measure of conciliation, but the consequence of that absolute lack of conciliation: "leave the child here before going to work." Centuries ago, a child and accompanied and helped his parents in their daily work, and probably learned and inherited his trade. Today we don't even know what our parents do. My father worked to pay me for college, but I never stepped on the office where he worked, I never knew what he was doing there all morning, he never told me "make me these photocopies, go to the archive to look for such papers ...", not even I know if there was a file or a photocopier where he worked. If we want to reconcile work and family, we must completely change our production system. And if not, if we choose to continue considering them irreconcilable, then we will have to continue choosing: either you work, or you make family life.
With this we finish. We have reviewed the topics in which Carlos Gonzalez It is a reference and we hope that our readers enjoy the fruit of our work as much as we have enjoyed doing it.
Our next interview will deal with another of the issues that most interest Baby's readers and more, childbirth, especially the physiology of the process and the advantages and disadvantages of excessive medicalization.
