Resolutions

Leave a comment

I have always loved reflecting, writing, and making resolutions. I remember New Year’s Eves in my childhood, curled up on a couch, writing furiously in my journal. I still love new beginnings, blank slates, a clean notebook.

My only problem now is time. How can I work on resolutions if I never sit to reflect and collect my thoughts? Most days now are split between racing around like a madwoman trying to get the most salient items on my to-do list completed and slowing down to enjoy time with my husband and little ones. But there is no in-between. There is no journaling while the kids play, reading the newspaper while they play with Legos, checking things off of my to-do list as my little cherubs entertain themselves. Because most tasks can’t be completed at work (unless it is a day when I am not scheduled to see patients) I spend my nights doing these things, go to sleep late, and am constantly on the verge of sleep deprivation.

Gosh, I realize this sounds pretty pessimistic, but it’s actually not. I enjoy being busy, and I’m very happy. But overall I’d like to be more intentional, despite the many directions I am pulled in.

I don’t put too much pressure on myself when it comes to resolutions, but here are a few things I’d like to focus on this year:

  1. Getting our house ready for a third. We have a few home improvement projects (some quite large) on the agenda and we now somehow need for these to be completed by August.
  2. More date nights with my husband. Since we don’t live close to family, this is always a challenge. Fortunately, we have great friends who have volunteered to mom-sit, and we need to take advantage of this a bit more.
  3. Launch a side biz. My husband and I have a specific idea in mind, in the works now for a few weeks, and we will hopefully bring this to fruition in the new year.
  4. Work out. We have struggled to fit this into our schedules since our first was born. And I have always been worried about the return of hypothalamic amenorrhea. But now, especially for purposes of a healthy pregnancy, I’m going to start working out 2-3 nights per week. We’ll probably start off taking advantage of our home exercise equipment before considering another splurge.
  5. Blog more intentionally. This has been a very sporadic endeavor in the past year, but I’ve quite enjoyed it, and need to focus my efforts a bit more.
  6. Move into more leadership roles at work.

Hoping for a healthy and happy New Year to you all!

Grateful for

Leave a comment

My parents grew up poor. Rationing food, wearing hand-me-downs, and walking to school in broken shoes poor. On Christmas Day, the well-off kids would show off their fancy toys and my parents, ashamed, would hide their knick-knacks and knock-off toys for fear of being teased.

To this day, my mom (now well-off), still hoards plastic bags from the grocery store to re-use in the home. She clips coupons and visits five different stores to find the best deal. She keeps clothing from twenty years ago because, who knows, she might wear it one day.

My father used to collect any money he could to buy a candy bar at the store. Years later, one of my earliest memories is stopping at a gas station to buy a Snickers bar, simply because he could. We snacked on our bars at 11 o’clock at night (this was the 80’s, people, there was less judgment around child-rearing) and listened to music on an 8-track player.

Because my parents grew up poor, they never wanted my brother and I to grow up wanting for anything. We lived in a working class suburb in my early childhood and my parents scrapped together jobs – delivering pizzas, working overnight at a factory, serving as senior home aides – to make money until they could obtain their professional licenses and move into the middle class.

Now that I have kids, my parents spoil them as well. My kids have too many things and we do our best to dwindle down the piles, to explain to our kids why they can’t buy everything, to have them understand that there are children out there who don’t have the opportunity to own allofthethings – ultimately, to have them understand that things are just things, and there is no end to the hedonic treadmill.

In my experience, it’s easier for someone who comes from modest means to understand why they can’t have everything, and to be grateful for what they do have. I wonder how I will teach my children, who are being raised in a bubble, the art of gratitude, grace, modesty.

(Barely) pregnant

Leave a comment

So this happened today, on Christmas Eve. I honestly can’t think of a more perfect present!

IMG_0410

Yes, I am barely pregnant at this point. And really just maybe pregnant. Maybe it’s a false positive, maybe I’ll miscarry, maybe the baby will have a birth defect that’s incompatible with life, and on and on and on. There are so many unknowns right now, at literally only 4 weeks pregnant, but part of me is already trying to wrap my head around what life could be like in August of 2018. Three little ones – 3, 2, and a newborn. Our house will be packed to the brim. The financial plan we created this week will need to scrapped and redone. My current baby will no longer be a baby – he’ll be a big brother. Will it be (our third) boy or a girl?

Right now, I’m just praying that this barely-there pregnancy sticks and that our baby is healthy.

Merry Christmas!

No longer a salad person

Leave a comment

Tonight, we had dinner at a local pub. We sat tables across from my son’s classmate (their family is not very friendly, so this seating was unfortunate). The mom, who is quite slim, ordered a salad and picked at it. For a second, I looked down at my forkfuls of mac n’ cheese (swiped from my kids), veggie burger (I have been vegetarian for 2 decades), and french fries, and felt a bit ashamed. But then I remembered the days of being a salad person, and was overwhelmed with happiness that I am no longer a salad person.

Disclaimer: people who eat salads are good people. And salads are good for you. My concern is with being the type of person who would only order “salad, no bread, and dressing on the side, please” and then lose her shit if the dressing was accidentally mixed into the salad or someone dared throw a bread crumb in there. Or someone who spent 2 hours on the elliptical in college because she had “eaten too much” the day before and then headed to the cafeteria mid-day to eat her one meal of the day – salad.

In college, there was a painfully thin blonde freshman with wavy hair and glasses. All she ate was salad. We (including everyone with an eating disorder who didn’t actually think they had an eating disorder) called her Salad Girl. She would buy two trays full of just greens with nothing on them. Then she would work out next to me on the elliptical for 2 hours. There was a 30 minute limit for the elliptical (a popular machine if you have an eating disorder because you can “work out” while still exerting minimal effort since you’re always running on empty) so we would all sign up with different names. This was in the pre-everything-online days so we had to sign in by hand or call the night before. So if you were signing up twice you had to call twice and make sure you waited a while (sometimes hours) so the front desk wouldn’t catch on. But of course other people would see you on the elliptical for that long and realize you were not both Bridget and Amy.

I am so happy to no longer be a salad girl. Sometimes, I think the pendulum swung the other way – my diet is not the best at the moment. But I try to have a few healthy things sprinkled here and there, and mostly I do my best. And I count my blessings that I am no longer counting every calorie, obsessing over every bite, and mapping out the details of every workout – that shit was exhausting.

If you are struggling with food restriction, I don’t have any great advice for you, but I do want you to feel hopeful that your life will not always be this way. I never imagined I could live the way I do now – but here I am! One day the switch just flipped. The main reason I had an eating disorder was because I thought I needed it to succeed. I thought being thin was the ticket to career advancement, finding a man, getting married, having a family, and owning a white picket fence. I held on to that fantasy for dear life. And then when I was told I had to gain weight if I wanted to get pregnant, I panicked. But what about the rest of my life!? The amazing thing was this: when I gained weight, my life did change – it improved. My career went on, I stayed married, I had children, I bought that white picket fence, and, most importantly, I freed myself from the intense anxiety of choosing french fries over salad.

For the record, I now choose french fries 95% of the time, and despite owning an elliptical, I rarely use it.

 

Trying to conceive

Leave a comment

My two attempts at becoming pregnant went something like this:

Pregnancy #1: Got married, starting trying to conceive (TTC), started to think that I most likely had hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA), was diagnosed with HA, underwent fertility treatment and became pregnant almost 21 months after we started trying. Those are the facts. The reality is that it was an emotional rollercoaster – hope, anxiety, disappointment, anger, sadness. And most of all, terrible fear that I would never be able to have a child.

Pregnancy #2: Oldest was 11 months, period came back naturally (hurrah), and the next month it didn’t come. I naturally thought my HA had returned (especially because I had a negative pregnancy test at 35 days), but I was actually pregnant. Second hurrah! I literally had to do nothing and I pretty much worried 0% about getting pregnant that time around.

And now, here I am. 16 months post-partum (!) and I had expected to be pregnant by now. Although I initially thought my second should have a few more months of being the baby than my first did, I really did want them fairly close together. But now, if we do get pregnant, my last two would be >2 years apart. This bothers me.

It probably bothers me because I am a Type A person and want everything my way. But it also bothers me because I am afraid that maybe it will not be easy for me to become pregnant again. I’m conflicted on this point. First, I feel somewhat selfish for wanting a third child. Is this normal? I have two perfectly healthy children! Our lives are FULL. It’s not like we have oodles of time to fit a third child into the mix. I think about people who are going through infertility struggles for the first time, and I feel terrible for having this blessing and wanting more. How greedy of me! Second, it’s giving me more time to think about logistics, and I don’t want to be dissuaded from our decision to have a third. Financially, emotionally, etc., does it make sense to have a third child?

What it boils down to is this: if we can’t become pregnant naturally (and if we are not able to, I am not sure that I know the reason because I am nowhere in HA land and cycling naturally), would we go down the infertility work-up/treatment road? I don’t know the answer to that.

But this third attempt is bringing up a lot of emotions from my first attempt, and the synopsis of my month is as follows:

Week 1: period is here, wah(!), lots of negative emotions closely followed by attempts at positive thinking and planning for the upcoming cycle (fertility window is X and baby would be born on Y)

Week 2: TTC

Week 3: More TTC, then the 2 week wait begins. This week feels like the calm before the storm – anything is possible but nothing can be done to change what’s coming down the pipeline.

Week 4: Time to type every symptom into Google to see whether it could herald a pregnancy (AND I’m a doctor AND I’m been pregnant twice!). Is nasal congestion a sign of pregnancy? How about back pain? Cramping? Bloating? What about spotting for 5 days…oh wait, that’s just my period.

And the cycle starts again. What else can I say except that it sucks. I think about myself ~5 years ago, feeling so dejected and low. I remember sitting on my “meditation” mat where I was supposed to relax with incense and practice Yoga for Fertility, except I was sobbing. It was a hard, hard time. This time, it is not as hard because the stakes are lower and part of me does feel crazy for wanting to add a third to the chaos of my life. I also do feel incredibly fortunate to be cycling naturally (without birth control) for the first time since high school!

But I am still sitting here wondering whether the new acne I’ve noticed and the low-grade back pain I’m experiencing could have anything to do with pregnancy…and what will I do next week if it is instead a sign of my period?

On the eve of your third birthday

Leave a comment

On the eve of your third birthday, I sat besides your crib*, singing to you and rubbing your back because you had a cough and a runny nose and were so frustrated that you couldn’t get the ‘boogies’ out and were having a hard time breathing.

This brought me back to all of the days** and nights I spent besides your crib, rubbing your back and singing. I remembered your last sleep regression, when you were 18 months and I was 8 months pregnant and sleeping on the floor besides your bed just to get a bit of sleep. I remembered how long it would take me to put you down for a nap because you would wake up the moment the hardwood floor creaked as I tried to sneak out of the room. I remembered the months of you waking up between 4:00-5:00am, how sometimes I would just load you up in the stroller when you got up and head out for a (slow) run and then to grab some coffee, letting your dad sleep. Although most of the time I would try to coerce you to fall asleep again and, when that failed, I would make some coffee and bumble through the morning like a zombie. I could go on and on – so many memories of little you.

When you wake up tomorrow, you will be 3. I can hardly believe it. Where did the time go? You have zoomed into toddlerhood before my eyes. Your words, your ideas, your compassion – I have no idea how the helpless newborn I brought into the world in 2014 has grown to be this loving, imaginative, and awe-inspiring child. You amaze me every day, little nugget.

Love,
Mom

*We are not quite ready to move X to a toddler bed. Mostly we’re afraid that he’ll recognize he has the freedom to roam outside of his room in the middle of the night/early morning.

**Naps were also not easy for this kid.

The Morning Hustle

Leave a comment

Google “working mom” and this is the first image that pops up:

Screen Shot 2017-10-25 at 8.59.58 PM Newsflash: this is not reality. I have 0% of the time ever sipped leisurely on a cup of coffee while wearing a clean suit and holding a quiet cherub in my arms.

Let me use this morning as an example. I wake up at 7:15am to the sound of my oldest (X, almost 3) screaming “Mommy, I’m awake! Mommy, come get me! Mommy, I’m awake! Mommy, come get me!” Pro: it is 7:15am. This is definitely sleeping in for my children. Con: he is not going to stop until I get out of my warm, cozy bed and head to his room. I check the Nest cam and see that my youngest (Y, 15 months) is also up. Time to start the day!

I make a pit-stop at Y’s room and take him into his brother’s room. They play while I get their milks and then we read a few books. Wednesday is one of my nanny’s earlier days, and she arrives at 7:35am. Neither kid wants to go to her (I should add: our nanny is awesome, we have known her for 3 years, and she is wonderful with the kids. However, they are both going through super clingy phases at the moment-even when their dad tries to take over-and this makes it difficult for everyone, but mostly for me). Noticing that it is now 7:45am and I have to be out the door at 8:15am to drop X off to school and then head to work, I start trying to motivate the little ones. I am able to hand Y over, but not before he sheds a few tears. X is another story. He can’t be persuaded this morning (although I am certain I will have to drag him out the door when he finally decides he’d like to play with her) and ends up hanging out in my room while I shower and get ready. This translates into water dripping all over the bathroom floor as he repeatedly pulls back the shower curtain, every item on our counter being perturbed by tiny toddler hands, and general inefficiency. Once I am showered and half-dressed, he decides that he does want to play with our nanny after all. I drop him off in the playroom, at which point Y jumps into my arms and refuses to be put down. So now I have another child in my room while I attempt to finish getting dressed, apply make-up, and style my hair (“style” is an overstatement: I have curly hair and 100% of the time wash it, apply product, and scrunch it). Y entertains me by attempting to throw everything down the toilet (succeeding only once), teetering on top of a step stool (clearly not a great idea) and repeatedly slamming the cabinet doors (only miraculously keeping all fingers).

I then head into the kitchen. My husband has already prepared X’s lunch, so I only need to pack it into his lunchbox with an ice pack, water bottle, and utensils. Meanwhile, Y (still in my arms), starts looking around the kitchen and pointing at everything he sees. I place a few Cheerios in a bowl for him to nosh on, and although he initially protests to being set down to eat (in this awesome kitchen helper), he is eventually quiet. I then try to pack some semblance of a lunch for myself, which ultimately ends up being yogurt, an apple, Goldfish, a Clif bar, a fig bar, and cashews. Nutritional fail but it’s 8:25am and I am definitely running late! But I do find time to fill up a water bottle and take coffee (+soy milk and sugar) to go.

My wonderful nanny has already dressed X (thank goodness) but he is NOT ready to go because he wants to play longer – of course! So I drop Y off to play and give X 5 more minutes as I pack everything into the car: X’s backpack and lunchbox, my work bag, my lunch bag, my water, coffee, and white coat (thank goodness I’m no longer lugging along pumping supplies!). Time check: 8:30am. Crap.

I hustle back in and X is now ready to go. Y senses that I am leaving and begins to cry again – so tough to hear this! I have to take a deep breath and remind myself of how happy he is when I come home and how well-cared for he is during the day. We step outside but X insists on lining up his pumpkins in a row, so we are 5 more minutes behind. He finally gets in the car and we’re off to school – 8:39am and 21 minutes to drop X off and drive to work before my first patient arrives at 9:00am.

We get to X’s school and he doesn’t want to go in. He says he wants to rest on the porch. Seriously kid!? He finally agrees to go in but then doesn’t want to sit with his friends during circle time (side note: X has been at this school for almost a year. He was initially in the 2’s class and now graduated to the 3’s class. He delays leaving in the afternoon to the point where we have waited 30-45 minutes while he plays! But he recently has started to try to delay in the morning.) Finally, he decides to sit with his friends. Phew!

Back to the car. Time check: 8:55am. Crap. Fortunately, my entire life is within a 2-5 mile radius, so it is a 15 minute drive to work during rush hour (clearly, this is the only way I can function given the above). Don’t worry – my first patient will be in good hands because my resident will be seeing her and will be ready to present her by the time I arrive (although yes, I do prefer to arrive a few minutes before clinic, hence the 8:15am goal estimated time of departure). I park in the garage and am upstairs by 9:10am. I find out that my first patient is late (maybe her morning schedule looked like mine!) and settle into the crazy rush of morning clinic.

If I had to add 3 things to my morning, they would be:

  1. Meditation/relaxation/thinking
  2. Working out
  3. Taking a look at work and preparing for the day

 

I am just not sure where to fit this. I don’t want to take time away from the kids, and I also can’t imagine waking up before 7:15am (I usually go to bed between 11:00p-12:30a. Maybe one day I’ll write a post about evenings!).

But I love many things about my mornings. Although this and 1-2 other mornings per week are my earlier ones (leaving between 7:45am-8:30am), I leave later 1-2 mornings per week (depending on the week) and generally have no clinic one day per week. I usually ask our nanny to come later on those mornings so that I can spend more time solo – reading, playing, eating breakfast together, etc. Whenever I have a later day, I always think: I should go to the gym, I should head to the office earlier, but then I remember that soon enough the kids will be in real school and they’ll have to go in early, and we won’t have time to spend leisurely mornings together. So I don’t work out, and I don’t meditate, and I don’t think about the day until I’m in it. And I definitely don’t sip leisurely on a cup of coffee with a peaceful babe in my arms. In sum: being a working mom is messy, so don’t believe those stock images!

Split second

Leave a comment

This morning, we had a birthday party at a local playground. The kids were all 2-3 years old. I watched as other parents sat back and observed their kids playing while I chased after mine and made sure he didn’t hurt himself on the large play structure. “Why am I such a helicopter parent?” I wondered. It’s true – my husband and I tend to be very anxious, paranoid, and overprotective when it comes to our kids. As a disclaimer, I don’t think that there is a “right” or “wrong” parenting style. I would actually prefer to be more laid-back and relaxed about parenting, but it may be impossible for me.

In any case, at one point I thought to myself: “I think I can relax. I’m the only parent hovering over my child here. Let me take a step back and chat with some folks.” So I stepped a foot away from my son as he was climbing up a play ladder. One second later, he had tumbled to the ground 6 feet beneath him and had landed straight on his bottom. Shit.

I tried hard not to panic. He was crying and I scooped him and took him to a quiet area to evaluate him. “Can you feel my hands on your legs?” I asked. My heart was beating fast, imaging the worst-case scenario. “Yes,” he responded. Thank goodness. “Can you stand up and walk?”. He could. Phew. I watched him walk and wince in pain, touching his back. He was being a lot more cautious and didn’t want to play as much. I touched his spine, low back, tailbone, buttocks. “Does this hurt?” No, he said. But at first, it seemed like everything did hurt. He would start an activity and then reached down to touch his back. He was momentarily distracted by cupcakes, but then didn’t feel like playing anymore. “I’m tired, I don’t feel well…I want to go home.” Fuck.

I called our pediatrician’s advice line and it was recommended that I take him to Urgent Care. We stopped by our house first and I iced his back a bit. At that point, it seemed like he was climbing and running with less pain, so I second-guessed my logic for a minute. Still, there was no way I could live with myself if something was really wrong and I ignored it. So I took him in. At the urgent care, they have a playground in the waiting area. He climbed up the rope ladder, went down the slide, played on the seesaw. These people are going to think I’m crazy, I thought.

They didn’t say it, but the less than five minute evaluation spoke volumes. They palpated the affected areas – no pain. They asked him to walk – no pain. They asked him to run – fast, no pain. They lifted his legs up and down – no pain. “X-rays of the spine emit a lot of radiation,” the doctor said, “so I wouldn’t recommend it.” That’s all I needed to hear – we were out of there in no time.

I am still worried, of course. I think: what if he fractured his tailbone and the pain is worse when he wakes up from his nap? What if he ends up having a slipped disc/nerve injury/becomes paralyzed? I can’t help myself. Being in medicine, I see worst-case scenarios all of the time. People who didn’t have cancer until they did, were pain-free until they developed debilitating pain, lived normal lives until being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. So any time anything happens to my kids, I shift into worst-case scenario mode. It’s a terrible way to live.

In sum: I think that helicopter parenting is in my future for a good while longer.

What my nanny knows

Leave a comment

For the past few weeks, whenever my husband and I would try to put our littlest pea down for a nap, he would point to his forearms. At first, we thought he was pointing at a mole, but this didn’t entirely make sense because he only has a mole on one arm.

After a few weeks, I pieced together that my nanny must be doing something to his forearms when she puts him to sleep. When I asked her, she told me that she uses her index and middle fingers to “walk” up his arms while singing a song. No wonder! He was probably like “What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know my routine!?”

When I was a first-time mom returning to work after maternity leave, not knowing these details pained me to the core. I would agonize over what was going on: how is our nanny/my mother/my mother-in-law putting him to sleep? Were they feeding him too little/too much milk?  Did they dress him in the correct pajamas? Were they sticking to the nap schedule? Were they careful while taking him on walks? And on and on and on. The mental load was exhausting!

But there were a bunch of little things too: what songs was he learning, what books was he reading, what words was he hearing over and over again? Our first nanny taught my son to refer to his bottle as “teta”. Now “teta” translates into “boob”. Although I speak Spanish, this term is culture-specific and not something we say. So for months we dealt with our son essentially screaming “BOOB!!!” every time he wanted a bottle. Fortunately, most people in the U.S. don’t speak Spanish, so it could have been worse. The point is: when you’re not with your child all day, you give up a certain degree of authority over what happens. This can be challenging for control freaks.

2.5 years in to having other people (family, nannies, “school”) care for our kids during work day hours, here’s with I’ve learned:

  1. Most of the details don’t matter. As long as your caregivers are adhering to the “big picture” rules, you can let the small things slide. In our case, we want our caregivers to be fully engaged with our kids – loving, patient, and kind. But we don’t need to micro-manage what happens during the day.
  2. Other people often do things better than you do – be open to suggestions! Having a variety of caregivers in our kids’ lives allows us to learn from people who have more experience than we do. Our kids benefit from different types of learning, play, and knowledge. In my opinion, this adds to their lives (and ours!).
  3. Having others care for your kids earlier in life may make later transitions easier. I have friends who are heartbroken because their children are starting kindergarten (which I imagine is so tough after 5 years of being their primary caregiver!). This transition may be less stressful for parents who had had their kids in day care, preschool, etc. on a full-time basis because the schedule doesn’t drastically change. Don’t get me wrong – it’s always hard to give up this autonomy, but if you had to do it once when you went back to work, you don’t have to worry as much about doing it later on.

Just okay

Leave a comment

These two articles really resonated with me. One from today’s New York Times and another from a blog, written some time ago.

Am I okay with a mediocre life? All of my life I have been an overachiever. In fourth grade, we were assigned a state and we had to write a paper on that state by the end of the year. This was in the early days of the Internet. In order to write a paper, you actually had to go to the library, use the Dewey decimal system, find your books, take notes, and then write. I vividly recall freaking out in December because I was worried that my paper, due in May, would not be completed in time.

One of my earliest friends recalls a transportation presentation that I blew out of the park in sixth grade – she still talks about it to this day, and it is probably the only reason we became friends.

In eight grade, I swept the middle school award assembly – my name seemed to be called after every category. It was almost comical.

I could go on, but in sum: everything honors, AP classes, SATs, Ivy League, MCATs, medical school, matching into a competitive residency, academic practice.

And here I am today: a husband, two kids, a home of our own, great careers, good health. I’m happy, but I’m not sure if I should be wanting more. I see people around me opening up their own practices, starting their own companies, becoming Insta-famous, working as media experts, creating ground-breaking innovations, involved in amazing research, and on and on. It all looks and sounds great but sometimes the thought of it just makes me tired (it may be the thought but also highly likely that it’s the kids). I like my quiet life: quality time with family, taking great care of my patients, teaching residents and medical students, barebones social media presence, just trying to be better every day.

Is this enough? It sure feels like it, but does this mean that I am done being an overachiever? When is it okay to stop wanting more? For someone constantly in motion, when is it okay to stop and just be?