Lucía, my pediatrician: "We parents are the mirror in which our children reflect themselves every morning" 2026

It radiates positivity and optimism from all sides. In a relaxed talk of just over an hour you end up with the feeling of knowing 'Lucía, my lifelong pediatrician'. An active woman, a mother who has gotten rid of guilt and a close pediatrician who looks you in the eyes to find out how you are doing. Their non-verbal communication transmits peace to you. Their messages give you the security you need. We spoke with Lucía Galán Bertrand (Oviedo, 1978) who reveals to us without filters the most beautiful and tender aspects of motherhood without hiding anything.

We are asked almost daily 'How to be a good mother' and since your title is You are a wonderful mother, I ask you...

To be a good mother we don't have to be a perfect mother. This is the first message that we must burn into our minds. We are imperfect by nature. We do not have to aspire to be perfect mothers or have perfect children. We have to start listening more to our feelings, our emotions, our instincts... and do what makes us and them happy. Here lies the secret.

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We study to be prepared for everything, however to be a mother or father there is no 'university'. Don't you think that we live theorizing excessively and leave aside our natural instinct and our own heart?

There is an excess of information, and this excess misinforms, and distances you from your most instinctive emotions. When we talk about parenthood or motherhood, silencing our most primal instincts is a big mistake. I do not believe in one-size-fits-all suits, nor in manuals for the perfect mother or father. Each family and each child has its own specific circumstances, you cannot give the same advice to a family of four children as to a single mother, to a father of twins, or to a divorced couple who have shared custody. Each circumstance is so different that who dares to say what you should or should not do with your motherhood? In consultation I like to ask, when they come with so many doubts and have received hundreds of advice, what do you want to do? And the mothers and fathers are left in a state of shock because no one has asked them before: do you want to collect? Do you not want to sleep with your child? Do you want to continue breastfeeding? Do you want to stop?... There is no need to follow a path of what is 'supposedly' good or what your environment does, when the same thing does not work for all of us.

The healthy child protocol helps parents resolve their doubts and pediatricians to verify that everything is in order. Do you think the number of reviews is adequate?

I think the protocol is necessary. It is true that, sometimes, what takes us the least time is exploring the child; it is important to attend to the exploration of the parents' emotions. The physical health of the child is as important as the emotional health of the person who is taking care of him. If mom and dad are not well, that child is not going to be well. That is why I believe that pediatricians have a great responsibility, we not only have to focus on auscultating him, looking at his hips, his eyes... we have to go further and see in what environment he is being raised, if everything is going well, if within the ups and downs that there are in upbringing they are overcoming them with optimism and fortitude.

How does a pediatrician get involved in issues of emotions?

It was an instinctive thing. No one encouraged me to do it, nor was it programmed. The origin was my own need to share with the world the emotions that no one shared with me when I was going to share myself as a mother. It was born from the need to share with the rest of the world the emotions that I had yet to explore before becoming a mother. I had studied a lot about pediatrics and medicine but no one had told me everything I tell here in this book and I wrote the book that I would have liked to read before my first child was born.

Do you think that what a mother looks like is how her daughter looks?

We are the mirror where our children reflect themselves every morning. If they see a mother excessively concerned about weight, calories, figure... If when she takes the packet of sugar from the coffee as if it were poison, children pick up that non-verbal language on the fly, much more than words. Gestures, such as 'put your belly in for the photo', are subliminal messages that we send them. These gestures end up becoming their patterns and they will want to repeat them. I always say, what you are seeing in the mirror you don't like, change your profile because that is what your child is seeing. Even if you don't see it, it's watching you all day.

Is it essential for a mother to fall in love with her child? And if it doesn't happen, is it because I don't love him?

It is very common not to fall in love with your baby, and that feeling generates guilt, frustration and pain that crushes many mothers. You don't dare share it with anyone. The problem is that the image of motherhood is idealized and it seems that from the moment you give birth you have to feel butterflies in your stomach, and we forget that childbirth is one of the most painful and traumatic moments in a woman's life. We have been sold such a fairy-tale image that it is natural to get frustrated by not feeling it. We have to free ourselves from that guilt, tell them to be calm, to give themselves time, that little by little they will gain confidence with their baby and that this feeling will come but it will undoubtedly come.

And the dad also 'has to' fall in love'?

The ideal is that she fell in love. Love is so beautiful, isn't it? (laughs) The maternal instinct is different from the paternal instinct, in the book I dedicate an eternal chapter to this very complicated topic. I don't want to generate controversy. The truth is that women, from the first moment we find out that we are pregnant, all our thoughts are in line with the baby, and when it is born we already feel like mothers, for months. Men go slower. The first months are very relegated. It doesn't exactly find its place, and if the baby is fed with breast milk, I won't even tell you. They go at a slower speed, when that crush with their baby arrives, we are already exhausted, we are already meeting our friends for drinks. We feel differently. We both feel a ten out of ten on the scale of love, but they are different metric scales and at different rhythms. We must be aware of this, because if not this generates a lot of frustration in the couple. For example, you see certain actions of the man and you may think that he loves the child little or that he loves him but not like you, or I would never do this...We are different. We have the same rights but men and women feel different. The same thing happens in the animal kingdom. The key is to accept it, enjoy it and look for common points.

Recipes to remove the guilt of 'not achieving everything'.

We are not perfect. Removing guilt is our job alone, it is a personal job. The phrases 'we are exposed to a lot of pressure', 'there is a lot of work demand' are not valid... True phrases but it is what it is, it is evident. You have to free yourself from guilt, self-punishment and be self-critical. What I'm doing doesn't sit well with me, I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I come home and yell at the kids. It's over! I've gotten as far as I've gotten and more tomorrow. Nobody is perfect, even if we see perfect lives on television or on social networks. Nobody has a perfect life, nor can we pretend to be. And so we must transmit it to children from a young age. They understand it perfectly and adapt to everything. It is a good lesson to see that life is not all successes, that you have to fight and fight, that to see beautiful things you have to do beautiful things for others, think and speak beautifully and not complain all the time.

Álvaro Bilbao, 'the child's brain explained to parents', tells in his blog 12 secrets that you can whisper to your child such as 'Do you know that I love you?', 'The day you were born was the happiest day of my life', 'Tonight when you sleep I'm going to get into bed with you and I'm going to hug you really tight'... What are the secrets you tell your children?

I continually tell my children: 'I trust you', 'you are capable', 'I know you can do it', mom will always be here', 'mom can't prevent you from falling or failing an exam or not winning a game but what mom is going to invest in is getting you up after every fall', 'you can always count on me for the good and the bad'.

I believe that once you become a mother this is an eternal state, it goes beyond life or death. You lose your parents or a child and you still feel that unconditional love for them. They are messages that we must repeat to our children ad nauseam and mark them with fire in their minds, because then adolescence will come and it is about collecting the seeds that we have sown during childhood.

What do you feel when you attend a birth? Do you enjoy?

Whenever I detect emotion at high levels, my eyes are there, that's why during childbirth, the moment the baby meets its parents, my emotions move. For years I have had to hold back my tears remembering mine. It is beautiful to be part of that moment, to accompany the mother, to bring the father closer, to put her hand on her child's head, to serve as an anchor for her baby because sometimes you are so afraid that you become paralyzed. That moment seems like magic to me. It is wonderful to be part of this unique moment.

In your second book there are many stories of overcoming fathers and mothers. What would you like readers to learn from them?

They are three very powerful, very inspiring stories of very brave families and children. The story of children like Jonay, Álvaro and Natalie is full of life. I want when people get home, with their lives without major problems, to think that I have no right to complain: I'm in good health, I earn enough money to keep going, my children are fairly happy, we don't lack anything... that's it! I have no right to complain. In a timely manner of course, in private to let off steam, but out there there are such big problems.

In the park the parents talk to each other, on the school WhatsApp the parents, with exceptions, care for and educate all the children as a tribe. “When a woman becomes a mother, she becomes the mother of all the children in the world.” Why does this kindness end in childhood?

Becoming a father or mother causes you to work more on empathy towards other fathers and mothers, and above all, you enhance kindness towards children. No one can stand to see childhood pain or the suffering of a child... And we can't stand it because we inevitably think about our children. And that is love. When we become adults and innocence is lost, everything is perverted and then distrust begins and fears are born.

In your Facebook post you commented on a talk the pediatrician gave about conciliation. What do you think of Carlos Gonzalez?

I don't know him personally and I have read many of his books. I think he has tremendous merit. He has done a lot of good for motherhood and pediatrics. Aside from the fact that on some specific points, as with other co-workers, we do not agree. He deserves all my respect for where he has come, what he has done for millions of families and the people he has helped. However, I have read some things in his books that I did not identify with. For example, it says that children should live with their parents until they are 18 years old and the opposite is going against nature. And reading that, in my case, when I was getting divorced when my children were 4 and 3 years old, after a very painful process and having worked like a true lioness 1000 kilometers away to raise my family, it hurt me a lot. What I think is that what children need is love. Regardless of the number of houses and people who live in it. If there is only one mother, two grandparents and a mother, two fathers, two mothers or a father and a mother. What they need is love. And what makes no sense is maintaining a relationship based on disrespect, pain, lack of love... because it is a terrible example for our children. When I read this statement I felt tremendously judged and hurt by my personal story. But minus this, we agree on most issues: fully pro breastfeeding. And it also happens that when you become media, the media do not always transmit the message that you want to transmit. For me Carlos González, chapeau!

What message would you give to mothers who 'suffer' from the permanent judgment of their mothers, friends, aunts... of 'that's how it was done and you're great'? How can we help them?

I would give them two messages: one for the baby's grandmother and another for the mother.

I would say to my grandmother that motherhood is now your daughter's, respect her. Many grandmothers come to me and they tend to be warriors because they see me as young, I was born in 1978, it makes them distrustful. In our profession, youth is a point against us. They have a lot of life experience but we pediatricians have academic training to give the advice we give. Grandmothers have to be grandmothers: provide support, love, understanding and be present.

And to the mother, I would tell her to follow her instinct and if she has pediatric questions to ask her pediatrician because he is the one who can best give her the alternatives, the light she needs to choose the path...Then you make the decision with reliable information and without the pressure of what your sisters, friends have done...The pediatrician should not exert pressure. The role of the pediatrician is to inform and accompany, without pressure. This way, parents will be the ones who can really decide what they want.

Did your way of being a pediatrician change when you became a mother?

A lot because you discover a parallel world, which is the world of emotions. Before becoming a mother, I had been working in a hospital for three years and I had not even remotely realized what postpartum entails, for example. In college, not even ten minutes are dedicated to it. No attending doctor had spoken to me, not even I had noticed it myself with the number of mothers who had gone through what giving birth entailed through my hands, I'm not talking about the episiotomy but about the emotional scars that remain open in the postpartum. The first time I fell off the cherry, and generated a double feeling of guilt. Guilt for not having realized as a health professional what all this means, and not having been able to accompany all the families who had already passed through my hands. And guilt for feeling bad, for being apathetic and with that sadness that invades you. Since no one had told me, I felt terrible for feeling bad, having the constant urge to cry and on top of that being a pediatrician. I had a healthy child, I couldn't complain with what I had seen in my consultation! But how do you complain, Lucía.

How have you removed the guilt?

The guilt ended up being taken away from me over the years, little by little. When I started to share it, it freed me, and at the same time, I discovered that the vast majority of women had gone through the same thing. When you find that recognition it is a consolation. You see that you are not alone. And in life, as important things happen to you, you make them relative. Not sleeping is not that serious. I learned with experience.

The worst thing about motherhood?

How difficult! The hardest thing about motherhood is conquering fear. Nelson Mandela said that "brave is not he who is not afraid but he who conquers it." Since you are a mother, fear is another inhabitant of the house. Conquering that fear and ensuring that it does not limit you in the way you educate is a great challenge. It's the darkest thing about motherhood! Everything else makes up for it all.