Progressive Pediatrics

To start, I have to exclude Doctors Teraguchi and Polack from this review. They have done their best to be helpful when I’ve spoken to them in the past. Today, however, I had the worst experience I have ever had in a doctor’s office with Dr Malabanan. This was my first time seeing her and I can safely say this is the worst doctor I have ever encountered in my life.
I have an 11 month old baby girl who has been refusing foods so I took her in with the hopes that I would be able to receive helpful advice on getting her to eat. My visit with Dr Malabanan was not only unhelpful it was damaging to my sanity as a mother. Instead of providing me with suggestions and options for what I could do she kept reiterating how much my daughter should be eating and that she wasn’t eating enough, which is something I already know and the reason I brought her in. When I mentioned that she is still nursing adequately, she dismissed that by saying she isn’t getting much nutrition from breastmilk anymore, going so far as to ask me if I planned to breastfeed her beyond a year and when I said, yes, she acted as if breastmilk was already an obsolete form of nutrition and wouldn’t benefit her at all beyond her first birthday.
The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding babies until the age of 2. I am a mother with a child who refuses solids even if I offer them to her when she is hungriest. The one thing she enjoys is nursing and it had been my only hope in ensuring that she’s at least getting some form of nutrition that is healthy into her body. Until now the bulk of her diet has been breastmilk, and she has still gained weight and been on track developmentally. Dr Malabanan, in contradiction to the advice I have read on the most reputable websites about the benefits of breastfeeding, shattered the sense of comfort I felt knowing that my daughter was at least receiving some nourishment from breastfeeding.
Overall her bedside manner was also terrible. She was repeatedly distracted while talking to me, asked all the wrong questions, and didn’t offer ANY solutions whatsoever. She also made me uncomfortable by fixating on the fact that my daughter has gained one pound less than she should have, when her weight wasn’t even the issue. It is ridiculous to expect all children to gain a specific amount of weight, especially when the difference in what is recommended and what the child gained is as minute as one pound. She didn’t ask a single question about my daughter’s developmental skills which would have been a better indicator of her health than a one pound discrepancy.
Furthermore, when I asked if my daughter should be checked for a UTI since she has had one in the past which affected her feeding, the doctor acted as if it was ridiculous for me to want a urine test done and told me the only way to get a urine sample was by catheter. So I told her that her previous pediatrician used a clean catch bag upon cleaning the area to get a urine sample in the past. Yet instead of offering to collect a urine sample, she offered to give me the bag and told me to collect the sample at home and take it to a lab. Is this not a medical professional’s job to collect a urine sample especially from a baby to ensure the least amount of contamination? I will be taking my services to a practice that actually performs the job of a medical professional and doesn’t expect me to collect urine samples at home. I know there are doctors offices that collect both blood and urine samples in the office because I have been visiting doctors for the past 25 years. It’s not too much to expect.
To top off this horrendous experience, I asked at the time of making the appointment and at the start of the appointment that I wanted my daughter to get her second flu shot. By the end of the visit my daughter was screaming to leave and I was so frustrated I forgot about the flu shot. But given that I had told them that I wanted it on two separate occasions there is no reason for them to have forgotten to give it to her and let me leave the office without giving my daughter the flu shot. This shows how disorganized the office itself is and not worth your time, money, and most importantly, sanity.
At the end of this atrocious experience, she thought it was ok to jokingly say to my daughter who is a baby, «why aren’t you eating? Should your mommy spank you so you start eating?» The idea of spanking a child is not a joke to me. For a doctor, that too one who has already shown herself to be utterly useless in helping me, to joke about spanking my child is unacceptable and does not sit well with me at all.
I have never written negative reviews for doctors in the past, since I have always considered the fact that my one experience may not be representative of how the doctor generally is with patients. But this degree of uselessness and incompetence on the part of a doctor is absolutely unacceptable.

I can’t say enough wonderful things about Dr. Noha Polack and Progressive Pediatrics. She is always accessible (even via email), very calm, never alarming, and a huge advocate of breast feeding who will go to any extent to support mothers in their efforts. Her staff is excellent as are the other 2 pediatricians in the office. You can be confident that your children will be in the best hands when under the care of Dr. Polack and the staff at Progressive Pediatrics.