That’s the question being posed over at Mothers In Medicine, a wonderful group blog the tackles the tough issues faced by working mommy docs. This time, it’s a 27 year old, fourth year medical student asking if she should apply to joint Family Practice-Ob residency, knowing that she will give birth one month into her internship year, or take a year off instead. (She got pregnant by surprise after failed infertility treatments. Aah, nature …)
Here’s the advice I gave her. Feel free to head on over and give yours. It will be interesting to see what she does.
Congratulations! It’s always so interesting when our high-tech interventions fail and nature takes over.
Forget that this is residency – It’s a new job. I don’t think anyone would consider starting a new job in their 36th week of pregnancy, especially one with such huge responsibility towards others, both those in your care and those who work alongside you in your program. It just doesn’t make sense for you, your employer or your fellow residents. (I like to think of myself as a feminist, but I’m also a realist.)
I wouldn’t take they year entirely off, however. Find a research mentor in ob-gyn at your home institution, and get started right now working on a research project in the field you love. Use your energy towards that instead of applications and interviews. If you start it now, you can take time off in the summer for maternity leave and get right back in after that.
You’re going to be a working mom forever, so I say get used to it before residency slams you. Taking a year entirely off is going to make it that much harder to make the transition to residency. You’ll have the upcoming year to work out child care and settle into your new role as a working mom. Trust me, you don’t want to be struggling to find the right babysitter or daycare during your first few months of internship. You need to be able to go to work and forget about home, knowing it’s all taken care of by someone you know well and trust implicitly to take care of your child.
Good luck and let us know how it all worked out!
Peggy
Peggy,
Your advice seems apt in so many ways. And I see it as feminist and realistic.
It strikes me that it’s important to make the connection that residency is a job, and I wonder how many students coming out of med school think of it that way? Or if that’s a hard adjustment for some?
It certainly is the first time they are making money in years, so I think they do understand it is a job in some ways, but mostly think of it as another 3-4 year stint in training. The role of being in a resident team that provides coverage in a hospital and has a difficult call schedule makes handling maternity leaves not so simple. Especially with work rules limiting resident hours. WIth all the women entering Ob-Gyn, it’s something all programs have learned to handle and support.
I’m not sure that the idea it is “just a job” is relevant.
At my job I got no maternity leave (since I arrived pregnant and was not covered by FMLA). I was back on the job after 2 weeks out. Nobody minded. In most jobs they can handle you not being there for two weeks.
A medical residency must be different than just *any* job.
Nicoleandmaggie –
Two weeks for maternity leave? I don’t know how you did that – it must have been extremely difficult.
I doubt any residency program in the US would ever offer so little leave. Six weeks is pretty standard.
I took 6 weeks with my first and 3 months with my second. Neither seemed enough, but then I had babies who didn’t sleep through the night for the first two years.
Thanks for reading and for your comment.
Peggy
I didn’t have any children until after residency (about 4 months after, to be exact) but your advice is spot on.
great advice. i especially like the idea of finding something related to the field that is more flexible, so it is not an all-or-nothing choice spanning an entire year.
becoming a parent was frankly a bigger job than i anticipated. there is a lot of juggling. in my case, i needed a c-section and needed the full 6 weeks to recover enough to drive. we had three different child care arrangements the first year: the day care did not work well for us since the baby had constant colds and ear infections; a shared-nanny situation later fell through. my son also needed surgery at 6 months, and had a post-surgical infection. things just come up that cannot be anticipated.
i was anxious to get back to work as soon as possible; it was important to my self-image to not be defined by motherhood, and to keep up the pace in my professional life. and i did that; did some of the most intense work of my career, even. but looking back, perhaps i was trying too hard to be wonder-woman.
i later took a year off when my husband was transferred overseas. as much as i love my kids — and appreciated having more time with them, especially after my second was born — it drove me batty to suddenly be a full-time mom, and have virtually no grown-up life. this is why i think peggy’s suggestion of a research position is so wonderful!
kathy a. –
I’m the same way – I would have been a terrible full time mom. WIth my first we had great day care for two years, and then we found the world’s best nanny when we moved to NYC – She was with us for 11 wonderful years. My kids are the amazing human beings they are as much due to her influence as to mine and my husband’s.
Happy holidays!
Peggy
This post, like many other posts by Americans about maternity leave during residency, makes me sad that the American rules for maternity leave during residency are so much more restrictive than the Canadian. In Canada, residents can take up to a full year off of residency for maternity leave, although the amount that is paid is dependent on how long they’ve worked. One of my friends started her family medicine residency while seven-and-a-half-months pregnant and was able to complete a rotation in the children’s emergency department before taking a full year of maternity leave. Other residents have been able to accept residency positions while pregnant but then defer their start dates by three to six months so that they could have maternity leave. It seems like a much better system for parents and their new babies than the American system.
Solitary DIner –
Impressive. I did a little research, and the law in Canada seems to be 15-17 weeks minimum and all but one province up to a year maximum.
http://www.medical-residency.ca/details.aspx/case-studies/having-a-baby-during-residency.
Thanks for your comment!
Peggy
Many students straight out of medical school don’t think of residency as a job because they’ve never actually held a real, full-time job.
Agree. For many it’s just an extension of training With a HUGE workload.
Thanks for reading!
Peggy
Yes, training for which residents are being paid, even though said training is heavily subsidized by tax dollars.
One more reason I think college graduates should work for a few years before entering medical school. Based on what I read on various medical and medical student blogs, a majority of physicians in training are an immature, spoiled, overprivileged lot with no comprehension of how far ahead they are of their less-fortunate peers through an accident of birth. IOW, they’re just as clueless as my classmates at the Ivy League university I attended. It’s far easier to succeed in life when there’s someone there to catch you when you fall.