In doctor life, you are always waiting for the right time to....
The Right time to:
- get married
- buy a house
- have a BABY!
There really is NO right time for a baby. You find yourself justifying why you're NOT doing something... no money, crazy work hours, too young, want to graduate first, want to finish residency/fellowship first, want to secure a great job first, want to buy a house, want to travel, and the list goes ON and ON and ON!
In retrospect, med school was probably the MOST IDEAL time to have a baby in regards to having time. When I think back, I had so much free time. I only had class or rotations for part of the day so much of the day was free to do things like nurse, pump, sleep, eat (& of course, study!). Even a full day of school is less hours than a full day of working in private practice.
I was so young in medical school. I might have had the TIME for a baby, but I did not have the emotional intelligence to have one back then. We were pretty immature back then!
I got married my last year of medical school and had my son during my last year of residency. My husband and I always went back and forth on when to have children. We didn't want to be older parents, but we also had so many things we wanted to do before we had children (travel the world!). We thought it would be ideal to have our first child after I finished my training (to be financially responsible), but plans changed. Now that I look back, having a baby during residency was the BEST EVER!! My attendings were able to give me breaks to pump throughout the day. There were enough of us moms in the department that there was also a designated pump call room! I was guaranteed a morning break, lunch and afternoon break. I loved the other residents in my class and we were there for each other through our baby struggles. Almost all the girls in my graduating class had babies in their last year! I was also mostly done with overnight calls so I was home most nights and weekends!! The only bad part is that there is no paid maternity leave. You can take as much as you need, but to be board certified in your specialty, you are required to have "x" amount of weeks of training. This means if you take off 12 weeks for maternity, you will be graduating 12 weeks later than the rest of the physicians in your class. I wanted to graduate on time- my program had a policy where if you worked holidays, you got one extra vacation day.... so I worked all the holidays to get 2 extra weeks of vacation my last year. I rolled over a vacation week from the year before and was able to get a total of 7 weeks of vacation which I used as my maternity leave.
Private practice is the toughest place to have a baby! Yes, you're making a lot more money than as a trainee, but a busy practice makes it tough to find proper pump breaks & a place to pump, shortage of physicians makes it tough to take a prolonged maternity leave (unless you are lucky), paid maternity leave is unheard of (some practices may offer partial pay). You don't have an attending advocating for you, so you are fighting to get out of the radiation cases, laser cases, ortho cases, etc.while pregnant and fighting to get pump breaks later. In private practice, you are also ON CALL ALL THE TIME! In terms of childcare, this means you need to find someone/someplace that will also be ON CALL FOR YOU and your child in case you got stuck at the hospital and couldn't come home on time for your child. I was able to get 12 weeks off through FMLA- which was WAY better than the 7 weeks I got the first time.
You'll never really be prepared for pumping at work, sleepless nights, the messiness, piles of laundry, & endless diapers changes. JUST DO IT! It will change your life, but it will be the most joyous change in the world. Pregnancy& labor DOES get physically tougher the older you are, so DON'T WAIT! AND GET AN EPIDURAL!!!!
