Today, in our interview, Leila Namazova-Baranova, a member of the Organizing Committee of the Year of the Family, head of the Department of Faculty Pediatrics of the Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education “Russian National Research Medical University named after N.I. Pirogov” of the Ministry of Health of Russia, tells about her large family and professional path in life.
Leila Seymurovna, please tell us what it’s like to be a mom and a pediatrician at the same time? To what extent does the profession change the view of motherhood?
– Well, I just had it! First, she became a pediatrician, so she prepared thoroughly for pregnancy and further motherhood, mastered everything in theory, and then “implemented” the knowledge gained at the pediatric faculty of the second honey into practice. By the way, it was my conscious choice to give birth to a child only after graduation, I seriously wanted to master the program of the pedagogical faculty as conscientiously as possible, and only then arrange a personal life. I felt sorry for fellow students who had children early, saw how they rushed between the child and study, and realized that both the baby and the learning process ultimately suffer. And I wanted to do everything as well as possible for the baby, and at the same time not lower the bar of education, besides, as a student I was actively engaged in social and scientific work, sports. Returning to your question, I would like to emphasize that I sincerely believe that our pediatric education is ideal for all young people (not only young ladies) who are going to become responsible parents.
But I won’t lie to you, my first steps in the difficult field of motherhood were difficult – when your little blood starts crying, the whole theory disappears from my head! A joke, of course! But the truth is that you need to “translate a lot of knowledge into reflexes” – that is, to think very quickly, without unnecessary emotions, only on the basis of solid knowledge and skills how to help a child, it does not matter whether it is your own or not. And here again, I would like to emphasize how important it is for pediatricians to study well, because any missed lecture or undeveloped materials is a sure way to make wrong decisions and wrong actions that can change a patient’s life. And we don’t have the right to make mistakes. That is why I thought and continue to believe that by definition there can be no triples among pediatrician students, especially those who fail, because the price for this is too high in the future!
How much do you think has been achieved in recent years in the domestic pediatric allergy?
– Of course, both in allergology and in other areas of pediatrics, a serious breakthrough has been achieved in recent years. For example, new, very accurate diagnostic methods have been developed that make it possible to treat and even prevent this widespread group of pathologies much more effectively. It is gratifying that in recent years, many domestic approaches have received scientific confirmation and have become dominant in world allergology. I will give just two examples. The first concerns diagnosis, the second – treatment. Both approaches are disease-modifying. As the name already makes clear, there are such methods that allow you to change (for example, prevent the development of the disease or its transition to a more severe form) the trajectory of the patient’s life. What are these approaches? The fact is that a person with an allergy has an overreaction to some substances from the outside world (pollen, food or allergens of homes, etc.). But the allergy does not develop immediately. Initially (after the first meeting with an allergen that is causally significant for this patient), he develops a so-called sensitization, that is, a tendency to develop some kind of allergic disease. There are no clinical manifestations at this stage yet. So, domestic children’s allergists have always believed that already at this stage the child should carry out various activities aimed at reducing the “allergization” of the body, that is, do everything possible to prevent this allergy from being realized. This approach was not supported by pragmatic Western medicine. Our European and American colleagues have been trying for decades to convince us that this is uneconomical. However, in the last few years, after the diagnosis has moved forward, it has become possible to determine not just causally significant allergens, but the reaction to their individual components, it became clear that there is a “window” (until about the end of the preschool period) when this process of allergy development can be very much slowed down and even reversed. The second approach, which we have defended again for several decades, is the early initiation of allergen–specific immunotherapy for children (when using special preparations made from allergens, the patient’s body is “trained” not to react to them). The same story, colleagues believed that this method should be postponed and used only when medicines are ineffective, but we continued to insist on its priority. As a result, all modern international documents now emphasize the need to use it at the early stages of the development of the disease after appropriate diagnosis and, of course, if appropriate drugs are available. And there are many more such examples.
How do you think a family with a small allergy sufferer differs from an ordinary family?
– The fact that it will have to rebuild the lives of adults to an even greater extent in the interests of the “little crew member”. It is not worth waiting for the allergy to go away by itself, you need to quickly diagnose, find out what the child is reacting to and quickly rebuild the way of life of the whole family. If the baby has a food allergy, then you definitely do not need to bring food to the house that the child should not eat. If they are not there, it will be much easier to avoid contact with them, and therefore exacerbation of the disease. In the family of a baby with a reaction, for example, to aeroallergens of the home, cleaning will definitely have to be carried out only in his absence, and for the family of a patient reacting to animals, the idea of having pets will have to be postponed indefinitely. Accordingly, when going on a trip, parents may have to take with them not only medicines, but also a pillow, and sometimes a blanket, and build the route itself again in the interests of the child’s health. But these are all small things compared to the health of your beloved offspring!
What traditions and values of your family have you passed on to your children?
– I am very lucky to have parents! They loved my sister and me incredibly, took care of us, gave us an excellent education, taught us intelligence, laid the foundations for a healthy lifestyle, passed on the culture of many generations of their families, and taught us responsibility. Being representatives of very distant peoples – Caucasian and Slavic, very different professions – radiophysics and history, with a ten–year age difference, my beloved parents conveyed to us the conviction that the main thing in any person’s life is his Family! The family in every sense of the word, the Family as a unit of society, the Family as a storehouse of folk wisdom, the Family as the main University for any of its members, as a support and support. You can list it for a long time, but it’s not the wording that matters, it’s the conviction that matters, and it’s this conviction that my sister and I tried to convey to our girls, we have five of them for two!
How often do you manage to get together as a family and what do you like to do together?
– We try to “announce a big gathering” on a monthly basis, when all representatives of our large family gather at one table, our mother, children and grandchildren, sons-in-law, their relatives, and with such a large company we discuss the latest events in the Family, enjoy cooked “goodies”, sing songs, share impressions of books we read and business trips and we just chat.
Is a strong family for you…?
– A strong family is a Pyramid, or rather a mighty Tree. These are the roots, our ancestors. This trunk is the living Family members with many branches, and of course, the crown is our children, grandchildren and all future generations. There is no present without the past and there is no future without the present, therefore, each of us bears his part of the responsibility so that each Family remains a mighty Tree, and our Homeland as a whole remains the incomparable Forest, the Taiga familiar to the map of Russia, the power of which, contained in the people themselves, will last for centuries!
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