#mindful mumbles

[mindfullymedical]

Almost baby time!

Guys I am having my induction a week from yesterday!

I'm going to be a mom!!!!

[mindfullymedical]

Well after an infertility diagnosis, four IUIs, IVF (one ER and two FETS), a chemical pregnancy, a miscarriage, and three years of trying I am happy to announce...

Baby Mindful coming in August 2025!

[mindfullymedical]

I am sorry followers for the sudden shift in tone, I am in a strange way.

[mindfullymedical]

[mindfullymedical]

 One more week and I’m done with residency!

I’ve learned so much, I’m more self assured, a better clinician, better rooted in my knowledge and my morals.

I feel broken.

After a few glasses of wine and the celebrations of graduation, I came home and the tears started flowing. It was overwhelming, the relief that this experience is over. Because there is a poorly defined seldom spoken collective trauma that we as residents go through.

It’s in the impossibly long hours, the massive amounts of clinical knowledge, the fear of making a mistake, in  the scorn of colleagues and superiors when we do, and don’t forget about the global pandemic. We push through aday at a time. Counting down until the next vacation, the next day off, until the block ends, the shift is over. We cry in empty patient rooms, in supply closets, in showers, on our kitchen floors, in our cars- If we cry at all. Eventually you get good at seldom feeling, we push all tenderness aside, if we can.

As I finish these most grueling years, I feel splintered. There are other things too; the doll in lace,  listening to the agonized cries of a mother losing a child, telling a four year old’s father that he has leukemia, watching a forgotten toddler suffer for weeks in agony that we can’t stifle with medications as the family struggles with code status, the young adults who  suffer alone as visitors are forbidden in the height of the pandemic, doing a neurological exam on an infant in a trauma bay only to discover fixed and dilated pupils and learn later that he was shaken...

We all have dozens of stories like this. Most of them pushed aside, shuttered somewhere for later. Hidden.

There are good stories too- the thirty week  preemie who went home as a healthy baby, the first words uttered after weeks of therapy following a TBI, bringing a pool into the PICU to grant a final wish, joking with a boy who got a fishhook stuck in his nose, the crayon drawn cards and pictures that decorate my workspace, games of candyland and monopoly in hospital rooms, summer camp for cancer kids, countless hugs from patients and a few from grateful parents as well.

I am so immensely grateful to my mentors, to the kind attendings, to the patients and the families for all that they have taught me. I’m hoping to become a better person and continue to refine by skills as a general pediatrician and pediatric hospitalist as this next phase of life begins. I also plan on being unashamedly selfish and spending time and effort on myself.

It’s going to take a lot healing before I’m well again.

[mindfullymedical]

Shout out to the amazing nurse who caught a very serious illness in one of our babies based only on subtle clinical exam findings and intuition!

[mindfullymedical]

Coded a baby recently who suffocated while cosleeping unsafely. The child did not survive.

So a here are the ABCs of Safe Sleep

Please please if you can avoid it DO NOT CO-SLEEP, instead room share I have personally seen at least half a dozen infant deaths 0-9 months old from co sleeping and I’ve only been a pediatrician in a medium sized city for three years. It is always tragic. It is always heartbreaking. My very core aches for the families and babies involved.

Listen,  I know having a baby is exhausting, most pediatricians have even co slept once or twice in the past and we know better than anyone how dangerous it can be.

I hope if you're a mother of a young child your awesome pediatrician already told you all of this, but hearing it again doesn’t hurt. Now the part below isn’t shared as often, because I think many doctors feel like they are permitting cosleeping by telling parents how to do it. So on behalf of us all: I do not advise co sleeping, but it is your choice. Please understand that there is a risk of injury and death when you cosleep with an infant, however if you are going to cosleep anyways please let me provide resources so you do so as safely as possible.

If for some reason you must cosleep. (culture, social circumstance, fear, preference, ease of breastfeed, pure exhaustion etc.) please read up on some safer sleep co sleeping practices.Things like not co-sleepng if under the influence of sedating or illicit drugs or alcohol, breastfeeding is protective against sids, the bed should be firm and without much covers or pillows, and you should never sleeping on a couch, chair , or recliner with a baby.

Okay that’s my soapbox chat for today.

[mindfullymedical]

My research just got accepted to a regional meeting- woot woot!

Hahaha I hate research,but I’ll present for an hour or two for three days off of clinical work and comped travel, hotel, and meals. It’s also in a fun city so I’m totally sneaking out of the conference or extending the trip if I get a chance.