Dr. Theresa Dailey, who’s another provider in Dr. de Freitas’ practice, is a super smart, caring person. I’ve never used her as a pediatrician but know her and admire her as a person and wonderful mom to her 4 great kids.
Dr. de Freitas runs a program called “Healthy Chats” and as part of that, she spoke to my daughter’s Girl Scout troop around the time they were hitting puberty, with the basic “birds and bees” discussion, in a small setting in someone’s living room with moms and daughters.
When questions about sex and babies came up, Dr. de Freitas’ responses included statements about her own conservative religious views, and not expressed as opinion but stated as fact (e.g., marriage works best when it involves a couple from the same religion and background). I remember there was a lot of back-pedaling and explaining that needed to go on w/our kids on the car ride home since many of the girls in our troop are a product of two different religious upbringings (or no religious upbringing), two different cultures/races/ethnicities, etc. Dr. de Freitas made it clear to us that she is a conservative Catholic and didn’t shy away from expressing her religious views while dispensing health care information, which seemed inappropriate to me. But some people may gravitate to her for that very reason.
An outstanding pediatrician in the area is Dr. Suzanne Mills, who has a reputation as one of the best diagnosticians around. Her patients rave about her knowledge, warmth and responsiveness. If my kids weren’t as old as they are, we’d be going to see Dr Mills, but our relationship with our long term pediatrician (one who’s not mentioned here) has been fine – not outstanding, but fine – so we won’t switch now that they’re older.
