I wish I would have married a doctor.
I had that thought, today, as I was standing in the shower with the hot, heavy pressured water beating against my back.
It’s not a foreign thought. In fact, it’s one that I have quite often–when I am reaching the brink of exhaustion.
Mixing medicine and motherhood is sometimes excruciatingly challenging.
Like now. Like this last month has been.
Nothing is particularly wrong this month. I am actually on one of my favourite rotations–a rotation in emergency medicine. It’s fun, stimulating, exciting. But it’s also physically and mentally demanding. We work 8-9 hour shifts, which is quite slack by medical standards, but we are constantly on our feet–moving, running, bending, crouching. We are making hundred’s of decisions per shift. We are interpreting labs, imaging, physical exam findings. We are making care plans. Collaborating with other health care professionals.
I like it a lot, actually.
But this month, for some reason, I was put on all evening and night shifts. At first, I thought this was great. I would essentially have a whole month where I could spend the days hanging out with my kids, and then I could pass the buck to my husband later in the day and head off to work–which is exactly what I have been doing–it’s just that it’s not as awesome as I thought.
I am so fucking tired.
My son wakes up every day at 7 a.m. (and hallelujah for that! I hear some people’s kids are up at 5:00!) and so I get up with him. My husband will not get up in the morning. I know this. I have (mostly) accepted this. He is not a morning person. But then again, neither am I, but still, I’m the mom, so I guess I feel it is my obligation.
From 7 a.m. on, I chase my kids. I feed them, dress them, bathe them (my husband also has a strange aversion to bathing the kids–this too seems to fall into “mom duties”). I unload the dishwasher, reload the dishwasher, tidy the kitchen, sweep the floors, feed the cat, clean the bathrooms, make the beds, attempt to vacuum, pick up toys that are constantly being dumped on the floor, do a million loads of laundry, go to the park, come home, make or at least prep supper, put most of the dishes used to make/prep supper in the dishwasher, pick out the kids clothes for the next day, make their lunches should the next day be a day where they are going to day care. And then I go to work.
I come home between midnight and 7 a.m.–depends if I got a night shift or a graveyard shift. I’m often not tired. I surf the internet. I watch netflix. I fall asleep about 2 hours after arriving home. I sleep for approximately 4 hours, if I’m lucky, and then I get up and I repeat it all over again.
It’s been gruelling.
And I am so, so, so tired.
I try to make things as easy as possible for my husband. I try to be a normal “mom” and I try to do all the “mom” things–the cooking, cleaning, washing, feeding, bathing. And then I go to work. I think this is why working moms get mildly offended when they see those memes on the internet where stay at home mom’s are trying to point out how much work they do by advocating for the fact that they are not “just a mom,” but are in fact a chaffeur, chef, hair stylist, laundress, personal shopper blah, blah, blah. But the rest of us working moms, we do all those things too. Plus we work.
But sometimes, sometimes I wish I could stay at home. I like my job just fine and I would most likely make a very miserable house wife, but honest to goodness I sometimes feel a raging jealousy boiling in my soul when I think of all the women that are married to my male peers. So many of them do nothing. They sit at home with their one child. Attend mommy groups. Live a life of leisure.
Lucky them. Marrying a doctor. Marrying someone with a respectable and well paying career. Lucky them.
I wish I was them. I wish I had the option of sitting at home.
But I don’t. I have a shit ton of debt. And I’ve got to work to pay it off.
Even if I didn’t have the debt, my family would be living on a shoestring budget if we tried to live off of my husband’s pay cheque.
I went into medicine for a number of reasons. Firstly, I went into medicine because I realize I liked helping people. Secondly, I was smart. Thirdly, I wanted a high paying job. And fourthly, because I was risk adverse and wasn’t cut out for the business world.
I am fairly certain that everyone who goes into medicine does so for the exact same reasons, though there may be some fluctuation in the ranking of importance of the 4 decision making criteria. Anyone who claims to be in medicine for purely altruistic reasons is lying to you.
Being a physician is hard work. It requires constant effort and long hours. But if you are willing to put in the effort and the long hours, you will be well financially rewarded. It’s an excellent career choice, if you’re up for it.
And I am.
Most days.
But sometimes I’m not.
Sometimes I wish I was just married to someone who wanted to work this hard, make the money, and then I could take a break for a little while.
~Dr. Bee
