Expert Q+A: Dr. Lauren Sadovsky of Cevey Pediatrics

Dr. Lauren Sadovsky is a General Pediatrician with Cevey Pediatrics who cares for children from birth until they graduate from high school, treating anything from a common cold to anxiety and depression. She has a particular interest in normal/abnormal development, pediatric obesity management, and pediatric emotional health. Cevey Pediatrics strives to offer families the mom-and-pop feel of an old-fashioned solo practice in the setting of a modern, technologically-updated office. Cevey Pediatrics looks forward to taking care of your children through the years for their well-checks, sick visits, and shots. They are an accessible, family-oriented, and medically current practice.

This transcript was generated from Dr. Sadovsky’s 2020 interview from the ACM Bloom event. 

Amanda:

Hi everyone. It’s Amanda with Alamo City Moms, and I am here with our Bloom 2020 expert panelists for Q&A with Dr. Lauren Sadovsky of Cevey Pediatrics. And we are going to cover all of your questions about all things pediatrician-related.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Awesome. So thank you for having me on the show. This is great. I’m Lauren Sadovsky. I grew up here in San Antonio, so I grew up just about a mile away from the office now in the Northwood neighborhood, which is right near the airport, went to Incarnate Word High School, the all girls school. So I was ready to get out, went away for college in Dallas and went to med school in Fort worth, and then came back for my residency and did my residency downtown at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio.

I’m really thankful for being back in San Antonio. My husband grew up in the same neighborhood that I did. So we ended up living in the same neighborhood that we grew up in. And we now have three kids: a three-year-old, one and a half-year-old, and now a three-month-old. So life at home is chaos. We’re living the dream at home really. And just  personally chose to be a pediatrician because I’ve always had just this great attraction to kids and wanting to be around kids. They’re wonderfully resilient. And they’re wonderfully funny during just the craziest of times, and will say the craziest of things. So when I was going through med school, I realized that I was missing kids. And once I went to my pediatrics rotation, I was like, okay, I’ve got to stay within this because they’re going to make me happy for the rest of my life.

Amanda:

It’s so good, too, when your pediatrician is a mom—and a mom in the same kid timeline that you’re in because you feel like, okay, you’re 40—which no hard feelings to pediatricians who do have older children—you’ve been there, done that, and seen it for a long time. For me, it’s comforting. Let’s get into some of the questions that our readers asked—and the one that kept coming up over and over and over again are your top newborn care tips.

What are the three things you wish parents knew coming home from the hospital that would help make things easier?

Dr. Sadovsky:

So first give yourself some grace. I think most of my care tips actually go to mom. It’s okay to ignore the laundry. It’s okay to ignore the dishes, have somebody bring you some dinner, and just survive because you’re in survival mode for those first days, weeks—it’s all just a crazy blur. And I wish that every mom would know it’s okay, no one else needs to rely on you for anything, right? Because that baby is relying on you for everything. The baby will let you know when they are hungry or tired by crying. And you’re going to hear plenty. You need to take care of yourself to be able to take care of this other human being. So just give yourself some grace, sleep when you can. I know that when I had my first, I was feeling guilty about sleeping during the day because there was other stuff to be done, but, you know, looking back, I was thinking, why was I so crazy about it?

Amanda:

The best thing though. I mean, you can do anything when you’re well-rested, right. And after growing a human for nine months and then giving birth…

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely, absolutely. Keep taking your multivitamin, keep drinking a ton of water, and just trust that things are going to be okay.

Amanda:

I think that’s the biggest thing that we all need to hear. It’s gonna be okay. Speaking of newborns and this crazy time where we’re all in, I hate to use the word unprecedented because I never need to hear that word ever again. It is. Let’s talk about newborns and COVID and social distancing because it’s hard enough in the fall. Especially for all our fall moms who are coming up worried about flu season. And I’m not just worried about flu season…

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely. Yeah. And it just kind of, as I know a lot of moms are worried about when I’m going to the hospital, is it going to be safe and all that? And I was in the hospital during the peak of what San Antonio was experiencing this summer. So I can say that it was a safe spot to be in the hospital, all those nurses at labor and delivery, and in the nursery postpartum areas, they’re all used to keeping people out who don’t belong. So they know, and they protect all the women and babies there. So know that you are in the best hands in the hospital. The question that I keep getting is, should I let grandma come over? Should I let an uncle? Should I, should I? I think it really depends on mom’s comfort level. If you know that the people who are coming into your house have been responsibly wearing their masks and responsibly socially distancing, and you can trust that they’re not going to walk in symptomatic then, by all means, let your loved ones come in, hold your baby and help you because you need help too.

But if you are like many moms where you’re starting to questions like, Oh yeah, well, this family is in school and their kids are going to school and the parents are in whatever. Then maybe you should say, well, I’ll let you hold the baby and see the baby when the baby is a month old or whenever you feel comfortable.

Amanda:

Whatever that threshold for you is. Right. That’s great advice. I think that makes it easy for all of us to say, this is what’s working for my family right now.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely. Yeah. And then also just, I mean, I know that I had a couple of visitors who I would hold my baby up through the window so that they could see the baby. And, yes, I’ll be honest that in the last three months of my life showing my now three-month-old to family and friends and all of that, there have definitely been times that I have in the back of my mind. Oh, what if this is bad? What if, what if? And I think that’s just part of being a mom and maybe because I’m a pediatrician, I’m hyper-alert, but I think we’re all hyper-alert right now.

Amanda:

I think right now you’re right. All of us are. And that’s when you got to trust your mom gut, right? That’s why we have it.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely.

Amanda:

Speaking of being in the hospital, this is kind of a twofold question, but we often see questions in our Community and Conversations group like this:

When should I start pediatrician shopping?

How far along in my pregnancy, if I don’t already have an established relationship?

Do most pediatricians come to see you in the hospital and check out your baby,

or is it a staff pediatrician? How does that whole process?

Dr. Sadovsky:

Sure. So now more and more practices are not sending their pediatricians into the hospital. So currently at Cevey Pediatrics, we go to the hospital, but only to the main Methodist to see our babies. So if we have babies that are born at North Central or at Methodist Stone Oak or St Luke’s, then one of the teams that are there at the hospital will see the baby. I was with ABCD before I was here at Cevey Pediatrics. And when I was at ABCD, I was rounding on Methodist Stone Oak and North Central Baptist. So it kind of just depends on the practice themselves. So when you’re interviewing they’ll let you know what hospitals they go to.

Amanda:

Okay. So that’s perfect. So when should that interview process start? Do I need to start it when I’m, you know, 20 weeks? Or can I wait till I’m 30 weeks? What should I do?

Dr. Sadovsky:

Depending on you as a mom, what is your anxiety level coming into this? Do you want everything set up the day you find out you’re pregnant? Just go ahead and start checking off all those boxes. If you’re like me and you’re bringing home the baby the same day that the crib is getting set up, you probably need a pediatrician before you have the baby. That’s usually the best time. But when I was rounding in the hospitals before I was a general pediatrician out in the community, I know moms were giving birth and having a baby and saying, okay, who should I go to now? So I would try to help direct them to a pediatrician. So I think it’s ideal to have a pediatrician before you check in to have labor, but you do you. If you know you’re going to stress out about it, then check off that box and start interviewing so that you can have some control.

Amanda:

That’s good. Yes. I was the one who was checking into the hospital, calling friends, asking, do you know if your pediatrician’s taking new patients? on that end of the spectrum.

When does baby need to come in for their first appointment? And what are the things that you’re looking for?

Dr. Sadovsky:

So for my patients that I get to see in the hospital, we come up with that plan typically right before discharge. So if there was any trouble with weight, if any trouble with jaundice, any trouble with breastfeeding, then I want to see that baby a little bit earlier. But if everything is going just smoothly and perfectly, then I typically say, wait for the baby to be one week old, some practices, if they don’t get to see you in the hospital, they want to see you at two- to three-days-old. But sometime in that first week, most babies need to be seen just to make sure that breastfeeding is going well or formula feeding and gaining weight and all the questions that come up once you bring that human being home.

Amanda:

Right. All those things. So that was a great segue, actually. My next question is infant-related, but also kind of all the way through to older elementary school kids,

What are some definite “call your pediatrician” signs or symptoms that you don’t want parents to put off seeking care for? What the threshold that I should be looking out for?

Dr. Sadovsky:

I think most people would first say, what about fever? But the first 30 days of life, there’s no question about it. 100.4 or above you are going to an ER where we take all fevers seriously within that first 30 days. After that 30 days, we’re not as concerned about the fever itself, but how the baby is looking, how the child is looking. So you as mom are going to know your baby and your child more than anybody else. You are going to know when something is off, you’ll also know in your gut something is wrong. And any time you think something is wrong, we are here basically. Okay. We trust you because you know your baby best. Sometimes with fevers babies get dehydrated. So the signs that we see with dehydration is no tears. The mouth looks really dry with babies. We want babies having a wet diaper every six to eight hours. So if you’re starting to see kind of that culmination of we haven’t had a diaper and she’s crying, but she’s not making tears and she’s not eating, that’s a time to come in. Or another thing is sleepiness, drowsiness that is just out of the ordinary. I don’t mean at 2AM. Everyone’s drowsy. That’s okay to be drowsy at 2AM. But if you can’t wake up your usually rambunctious, running around the room child, get in.

Amanda:

Okay. Yeah. That’s good. Gosh, we are running out of time very quickly and I have a million other questions, but is there anything else that you would want to share with our readers and audience? Viewers, if you have questions, you can leave them in the comments here and we will circle back to them so that you can get those answered. You can also contact the pediatrician office and set up an appointment if you’d like, but before we end, is there anything else that you would like us to all know?

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely. So I think when you are on your route to trying to find the best pediatrician, I think just in general, find somebody that you feel a connection with that, you feel like you can trust. Everybody’s personality is a little bit different and we have a wide variety of fantastic pediatricians here in San Antonio. So if you don’t feel like your personality meshes with somebody, don’t feel like you’re trapped. You can find somebody who you feel comfortable with because you’re bringing your child. That is the most precious thing. And you need to feel safe with the person that you’re bringing them to.

Amanda:

So important to have a partner in that as opposed to a one-sided relationship.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Yes, absolutely. And then, you know, convenience is really important. Not having to wait a million years in the waiting room is super important and just how accessible your doctor is. If you have a concern, those are all very important things. So find somebody that’s going to work for you, work for your family. And just know that it’s not offensive to us. If you find somebody else that is going to be better for you, okay.

Amanda:

I mean, it’s better for everybody. It really is. So what you’re saying is choose this long-term relationship carefully, but if it’s not working out, ditch it and find someone else.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Exactly. And maybe take the stress off of whether this is the only relationship or the rest of my life. It’s okay.

Amanda:

Thank you so much for all of your words of advice and your wisdom. We so appreciate you being a part of Bloom this year and seriously, these are the things that come up all the time. And I know that just hearing it from someone in our community is so powerful to all of us, me included. And whether you’re a first-time mom or a six-time mom, reiterating those things is always so good. So we so appreciate it.

Dr. Sadovsky:

Absolutely. Thanks.

Amanda
A fifth-generation San Antonionian - who happened to spend her formative years in Austin - Amanda loves the SAT from the confetti in her hair to the bluebonnets under her feet. Never one to miss a reason to host a party or decorate for a theme, Amanda revels in the 'mas Fiesta' attitude of the city. She's mom to Vivi (2012) aka #HurricaneVivi, Mac (2020) and wife to Francois, whom she met at Texas A&M (FTAC '05). She has a Masters in Early Childhood Education and a Doctorate in Making it Up As She Goes - which means she's a sometimes-fun-mom. You can find her on Instagram . She loves confetti, croissants, and a cold Ranch Water. Favorite Restaurant: Piatti's Favorite Landmark: Johnson Street footbridge in King William Favorite San Antonio Tradition: Fiesta Medals