Yesterday I had a long and gruelling day.
The Friday before a long weekend is always chaotic as everyone tries to make sure that every patient is safeguarded through inherent lower resources over the next few days. People want to cross every "t" before being away and the on call person for the hospital often gets extra calls/jobs because of this. That is coupled with the fact that our residents have their academic half day on Friday afternoon putting more pressure on the remaining staff. Usually that works fine and the attending doctors pick up their pace until the residents return but on a day where everything converges it means working at a superhuman level.
That was yesterday.
Despite the exhaustion of yesterday's call shift I find waking up post-call I have overwhelming feelings of gratitude.
I am grateful that despite all the demands on me for my job that I have the resources to help people. Say what you will about our current health care system (and there is lots to say) but if someone needs an ultrasound I can get it. If they need to be admitted for pain control we can get that for them. If they need life-saving surgery we have the resources at our disposal. I think of how much harder a demanding day would be if I had to look at patients knowing what they need and not being able to provide it. For people who work in remote communities and in the Third World that part of your job must be excruciating and takes a personal fortitude I admire.
I am so grateful for my colleagues. There were countless times yesterday where I was humbled by the sheer caring of the people I work with; for the patients, but also for me. One of our senior obstetricians stayed all afternoon on the Friday before a long weekend because he knew I had a difficult delivery awaiting me and wanted to be around 'just in case'. This same person comes to the labour floor every morning and is the exact person I want to recount my adventures and decisions to. He patiently sits and offers reassurance and advice. One of the patients last night innocently thought he was my dad and sometimes in my job he is certainly paternal in his support of me. The other obstetrician on call came to help when I was getting so slammed and couldn't physically do everything at once. She came without hesitation and helped me weather the relentless waves of responsibility. She then went above and beyond and helped me with planning the mountain of inductions (a job for the on call obstetrician and arduous at the best of times) so that I didn't have to do it in the morning. "Let's do this together" is one of the nicest things to say to someone. The labour floor nurses met me with countless hugs and tried to shove some food into me on the fly like the mamas that they are. The antepartum nurses are amazing often having to hold down the fort when we can't leave the onslaught of the labour floor. I cannot say enough to convey the unbelievable kindness of the nurses I work with. They always remind me to change my pants when I have blood on them (which is almost always). They wipe blood off my arms and face. They constantly worry about bothering me when I know they are working just as hard with whatever task they are assigned. The hugs they give me when I have to do or have done something incredibly hard sustain me and help me to keep going. Their funny antics and laughter make coming to work a joy - even on the hard days. The person coming on call this morning texted me 15 minutes before arriving "Do you want a latte?" Little thoughtful gestures are what make life wonderful.
In conclusion I am so grateful to the patients. They knew we were busy and trying our best and they acknowledged that. The thankfulness from women and families was so true and honest I felt myself trying to wiggle out from underneath it. I wanted to give each patient more attention than I could but I am going to try to practice good self-care and remind myself that everyone did well and that is all that matters. I was constantly reminded yesterday of the strength of the women I serve. My voice half-broke acknowledging the unbelievable power of a woman that did everything I asked of her and used everything within her to deliver her baby. My favourite phrase of the book "The Red Tent" rang true "She was mighty to behold". There were many mighty women last night.
I woke up this afternoon with rested fatigue in my body and thankfulness in my heart. I don't think that more could be asked of a job - to work your body, mind and heart all at once. What a tremendous privilege.
Saturday 20 May 2017
Sunday 14 May 2017
Mother's Day
Mother's Day is often a reflective time for me. Usually that is because I think of all the people who find Mother's Day difficult. Today I find myself reflecting on a different aspect of this unusual day.
I had the wonderful 0700 am wake-up with a showering of hugs and kisses and presents dropped on my sleeping face. I had excited kids wanting to show me the crafts they made at school. This year's selections were especially wonderful and heartwarming.
I struggle to be honoured on Mother's Day as I find the rhetoric around motherhood and womanhood in today's political climate very limiting. In a world that has such an incredible diversity of amazing women I feel that the ideas around motherhood more confining than celebrating.
Mothers are a diverse group of people with a variety of circumstances and interests most of which cannot be held within the confines of a Hallmark greeting card. My children are small and their love is pure and innocent. My hope is as they grow that they will see Mother's Day as a call to examine how they view mothers in the world and how they can ultimately support them whether they choose to be parents or not.
Speaking from my own experience of being a doctor mom I am often confronted by people's misguided ideas that my children and I are always mourning the fact that I work. That could not be further from the truth. My children have no other frame of reference for their experience and are therefore happy they have a mother that loves them and has a cool job full of "operations and delivering babies". I know from my friends who are stay-at-home moms that they also have people say insensitive things about the choices they have made that works for their families.
Truly supporting mothers is what I would like to see Mother's Day be about. I think it's completely reasonable to shower mothers with hugs, kisses, cards and flowers. But is there also the possibility of widening that love of mothers to include a stronger network of support? My mother and her mother before her and the community of mothers that raised me (my aunts, my mother's friends, my teachers, my community mothers) had similar hopes and fears to what I think a lot of us feel now. They wanted us as their children to have safety and security, health, autonomy, access to education and to grow and flourish as people.
In the current global political landscape I think we have lost sight of some of the above values that mothers often think about as they watch their children grow.
We want our children to be safe and secure and yet there are still people and more importantly public policies that don't support the FACTS of climate change and the small changes that we could make to vastly decrease our effects on the earth that sustains us.
There are thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women in this country and as I sit here with my coffee, homemade crafts and cuddles I am keenly aware that there are children that long to hug their moms and moms that long to hug their daughters.
To our fellow mothers in the United States I read about what is happening to your country and I ache for you as a woman and as a mother. How policies can be made (by groups of overwhelmingly white men) that consider rape a pre-existing condition, that constantly battle easy access to contraception and the work of Planned Parenthood. That an overwhelmingly more qualified candidate who won the popular vote lost the election because she is a woman and how that secretly sits in the dark places of every woman. I think of the mothers watching the president make thoughtless choices that may culminate in war. War that will be decided by affluent white men. War, which disproportionately will take the lives of poor people of colour and permanently separate mothers from their children.
If you love a mother perhaps instead of (or in addition to) platitudes and cards you can examine your own inherent entrenched ideas of motherhood. Learn what the mothers in your life worry about or hope for and learn how you can rise up and help them. Perhaps you call out a colleague for a misogynistic statement about a working mom. Or you listen to someone's experience of sexual harassment or assault before brushing them off as "too sensitive". Could you take a minute to open your mind and heart when you look at a mother in a hijab before you support stereotypical thoughts on what she is teaching her children? Or a mother who is poor who feeds her children something that you wouldn't. Rally for easy access to contraception so that girls don't have to be mothers before they are ready. Rally for equal and universal access to education so that our future generations can make better decisions for the world. Rally for everyone's right to health care and for the rights of the poor because it's right and because there is no one who wants a mother to be taken from her children too soon or for children to be lost because of preventable diseases. Take the love you have for your own mother, the mother of your children, another mother you love or perhaps the love you wished you had for your mother if your relationship is strained, and work to make the world a better place for mothers, for women, for all of us. Let us mother the world this Mother's Day.
I had the wonderful 0700 am wake-up with a showering of hugs and kisses and presents dropped on my sleeping face. I had excited kids wanting to show me the crafts they made at school. This year's selections were especially wonderful and heartwarming.
I struggle to be honoured on Mother's Day as I find the rhetoric around motherhood and womanhood in today's political climate very limiting. In a world that has such an incredible diversity of amazing women I feel that the ideas around motherhood more confining than celebrating.
Mothers are a diverse group of people with a variety of circumstances and interests most of which cannot be held within the confines of a Hallmark greeting card. My children are small and their love is pure and innocent. My hope is as they grow that they will see Mother's Day as a call to examine how they view mothers in the world and how they can ultimately support them whether they choose to be parents or not.
Speaking from my own experience of being a doctor mom I am often confronted by people's misguided ideas that my children and I are always mourning the fact that I work. That could not be further from the truth. My children have no other frame of reference for their experience and are therefore happy they have a mother that loves them and has a cool job full of "operations and delivering babies". I know from my friends who are stay-at-home moms that they also have people say insensitive things about the choices they have made that works for their families.
Truly supporting mothers is what I would like to see Mother's Day be about. I think it's completely reasonable to shower mothers with hugs, kisses, cards and flowers. But is there also the possibility of widening that love of mothers to include a stronger network of support? My mother and her mother before her and the community of mothers that raised me (my aunts, my mother's friends, my teachers, my community mothers) had similar hopes and fears to what I think a lot of us feel now. They wanted us as their children to have safety and security, health, autonomy, access to education and to grow and flourish as people.
In the current global political landscape I think we have lost sight of some of the above values that mothers often think about as they watch their children grow.
We want our children to be safe and secure and yet there are still people and more importantly public policies that don't support the FACTS of climate change and the small changes that we could make to vastly decrease our effects on the earth that sustains us.
There are thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women in this country and as I sit here with my coffee, homemade crafts and cuddles I am keenly aware that there are children that long to hug their moms and moms that long to hug their daughters.
To our fellow mothers in the United States I read about what is happening to your country and I ache for you as a woman and as a mother. How policies can be made (by groups of overwhelmingly white men) that consider rape a pre-existing condition, that constantly battle easy access to contraception and the work of Planned Parenthood. That an overwhelmingly more qualified candidate who won the popular vote lost the election because she is a woman and how that secretly sits in the dark places of every woman. I think of the mothers watching the president make thoughtless choices that may culminate in war. War that will be decided by affluent white men. War, which disproportionately will take the lives of poor people of colour and permanently separate mothers from their children.
If you love a mother perhaps instead of (or in addition to) platitudes and cards you can examine your own inherent entrenched ideas of motherhood. Learn what the mothers in your life worry about or hope for and learn how you can rise up and help them. Perhaps you call out a colleague for a misogynistic statement about a working mom. Or you listen to someone's experience of sexual harassment or assault before brushing them off as "too sensitive". Could you take a minute to open your mind and heart when you look at a mother in a hijab before you support stereotypical thoughts on what she is teaching her children? Or a mother who is poor who feeds her children something that you wouldn't. Rally for easy access to contraception so that girls don't have to be mothers before they are ready. Rally for equal and universal access to education so that our future generations can make better decisions for the world. Rally for everyone's right to health care and for the rights of the poor because it's right and because there is no one who wants a mother to be taken from her children too soon or for children to be lost because of preventable diseases. Take the love you have for your own mother, the mother of your children, another mother you love or perhaps the love you wished you had for your mother if your relationship is strained, and work to make the world a better place for mothers, for women, for all of us. Let us mother the world this Mother's Day.
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