Of Medicine and Motherhood

Raising young children is like the residency of parenthood. I was reminiscing on my medical training experience, only to realize it’s not all unlike what I’m experiencing now. The similarities are intriguingly numerous once you think about it: the chronic sleep deprivation that comes from being awake at all hours of the night and trying to catch up on sleep at all hours of the day. The heart-sinking feeling when you get paged just after dozing off in the call room, not unlike the feeling when the baby starts crying right after you’ve settled into bed.

The unpredictability of your schedule: getting an admission just before your shift ends that wrecks dinner plans; the inevitable blow-out diaper or tantrum just before we’re ready to leave the house. The resultant difficulty of finding deep community, of trying to get to know people or attend events whilst navigating call schedules or bedtimes or being quarantined inside with sick kids. The temporally consuming nature of both, to the exclusion of all else if you’re not careful.

The wacky diets: coffee and granola bars and pilfered graham crackers and peanut butter in residency. Now it’s peas, packets of squeezable apple sauce, goldfish, string cheese. Not eating out much and sometimes not eating in much either—finishing the kids’ leftovers while standing over the sink is routine—which is perhaps why I keep losing weight.

Even the dress and accessorizing: gone are dry clean-only items, smart little purses, heels and makeup. In residency it was scrubs and clogs and white coats that accumulated patient notes, extra scripts, lenses and drops. Now it’s jeans and pajamas and diaper bags that accumulate extra socks and chew toys. Both reflecting the unending grunt work: paperwork and dressing changes and bedside consults as a resident; now, diapering and feeding and outfit changes (whoever invented onesies with buttons has obviously never tried to button up a squirming infant). In both cases, dealing with bodily fluids.

And so, it’s like I moved from one residency to another. I was just finishing the last of my medical residency years when I embarked upon what would become four kids in six years. In a way, it feels like we never got a break. I sometimes daydream about what life would be like if we had nine-to-five jobs with no kids: the fantasies usually involve a perfectly-decorated abode, pets (either an Abyssinian cat or a great dane), cultivated hobbies like oil painting and world traveling, and, between my working full-time instead of part-time and having no diapers or college funds to pay for, a hecka lot more disposable income.

But of course, catching the break isn’t the point. The point isn’t imagined comfort but forged meaning. Clearly in these seasons there is risk of burn-out, isolation, and depleted relational margins. But perhaps because we are so pushed in meeting daily demands, we are more aware than usual of how we are doing, with God and with each other. The stressors expose our inner condition and relational status, and in coming together to live the residencies of life with purpose, we become stronger. There’s really no room for narcissism or torpitude in this world of compulsory daily service. It’s a transformative period, probably in ways that only time will tell.