“I have a choice”
[This is a guest post]
Perhaps it’s an existential crisis. I had a baby in residency and everything changed. I’m realizing more and more now that motherhood brings a certain clarity to the female physician that could never be found otherwise, despite hours upon hours of scouring the medical literature to be “the best” doctor she could be.
Here I am, at last, finishing my residency. I have reached the end of my training and am ready to finally achieve my dream of being a doctor “when I grow up.” Since I was 5 years old, I’ve been chasing this goal. All those years of education, the countless sacrifices, the treacherous loans…I’ve survived it all, made everyone proud. Yes sir, I was determined to prove that I could have it all. Sure, I can be a doctor and be a mom—people do it all the time. But it never occurred to me that these people may not be happy.
I have been very fortunate. I did well in school, got into medical school on the first try, met my husband in medical school, had a fantastic wedding, “couples matched” into one of our top choices for residency, and had quiet possibly the easiest pregnancy and labor course of anyone I know. I feel like I’ve been on cruise control my whole life, each next step being rather predictable and quite easily achieved. Then, I became a mom.
You really cannot understand the love a mother has for her child until you become one yourself. Suddenly, I have a new sense of purpose. No longer is my life centered around my lofty career goals. I just want more than anything else to be a good mom. Easy enough, I thought. But then I went back to work.
I work anywhere from 10 hours a day (on a good day) to 13 hours a day. I take call for 24 hours about 4 or 5 weekends out of 6. On the bad days, I get maybe 30 minutes a day with my daughter. I feel like my parents and in-laws (who have graciously traveled far and away to help us out) know my daughter better than I do. And I am heartbroken about it all. Sure, I am beyond grateful that she is with family while my husband and I work our lives away. But I feel trapped by my choice to be a doctor. I simply cannot be the kind of mother I want to be while doing this job.
Now for the great debate: what am I going to do next year? I have to wait on my husband to finish his residency (his is one year longer than mine) and then we plan to move, so any job I get will be very short-term. What I want to do more than anything is stay home with my baby. I’ve never taken any time off (ie: between college and med school) and we think we could scrape by for a year if I did it.
There of course is a lot of fear associated with this thought process, but perhaps the biggest fear is, what if I never want to go back? Will I have done all of this for nothing? What will my peers think (I am already facing a lot of resistance with my closest colleagues, most of which do not have children).
I don’t know what the right answer is. But I am glad that I’ve found a network on here that understands EXACTLY what I am going through. Thank you for starting this website, Philippa.
