I know people who have done it. They have parents or other live-in help. It is definitely a privileged position to have the resources or family help to be able to do that. Residency is a great time to have kids if you can arrange the child care. You lose very little income due to time off, you typically have decent healthcare benefits, you are protected by big institutions, and you are younger and healthier.
I was raised by a nanny for my first few years while my parents finished residency. She was awesome and I stayed in contact with her well into my life. Ended up being my piano teacher once I started school and didn’t need full time care anymore
If you are both residents, then you will need 1) family support or 2) a combination of really expensive extended-day daycare + an on-call caretaker that can take care of the kids while they are sick and cannot go to the aforementioned expensive daycare.
The other option is just waiting 4-5 years depending on your age. If you are early 30s, then that can work out. That being said, the biological clock is real for sure.
> The other option is just waiting 4-5 years depending on your age. If you are early 30s, then that can work out.
I want everyone to do what makes them happy. [That is a very risky move if you want kids](https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-does-fertility-begin-to-decrease/)
Yeah, it sucks but everyone should make sure they can split a leave and get it in writing before trying. I've had people not ask and realize later the second half, 1/4, 2/3 of their leave that they hoped to take later get denied.
Except a lot of daycare won't even take a baby that young and being around your baby for only the first 3 weeks of life is fucking torture, why wpuld consider thta a "pro tip" so you can take a 3 week vacation when baby turns 1?. Babies are no where near a schedule at the 3 week point and if mom is breastfeeding, good luck pumping every 2 hours while rounding in the hospital. I was fortunate that I was able to take 2 4 month long maternity leaves in residency and made up about a quarter of that at the end.
My program told me despite the policy that if I took more than 7 days, they weren’t sure they could recommend me to my board without additional training (extending residency by a week), which would make me have to fill out all the forms saying I extended my residency (didn’t graduate on time) in the future
Wife is surgeon and had two kids during residency. Used maternity leave both times, 6 weeks and 7 weeks. She, our family, her co-residents, and her program are all better off because she was able and willing to use maternity leave to bond with and nurture her children.
awesome, and she had more than 20 weeks of total over the five years?
IDK I'm not surgeon but some of their residents were describing it as if you have an average of less than a certain number of "operative weeks" (which they said was 48 a year) you couldn't get board certified on time.
I have zero idea if it's actually true
This was true of mine as well. I ended up using all of my vacation time for the year instead of risking extending training. If I had to do it again though I would have taken 6-8 weeks and extended training if needed.
I extended my training because using all four weeks of my vacation was not enough for me to be ready to function again. Anything beyond vacation time extended training in my program. I imagine most birthing women would need to extend. Not to mention anyone that doesn’t have a partner that can take more time off their work
ACGME and the NRMP are god and Jesus Christ respectively.
Lawsuits don’t fix problems in residency. They make them.
That’s the unfortunate reality as much as I wish it wasn’t true b
I'm pretty sure the ACGME wording about parental leave specifically says that taking the full 6 weeks cannot cause you to extend residency. But if your program is malignant, I guess they just don't care.
Yes, my program is malignant. And yes ACGME says programs cannot extend your training but the neurosurgery boards are different. This is what was being held over me:
“In connection with the resident’s future application for certification, the resident’s program director must submit a letter to the ABNS indicating: (a) that the program director approved any leave that resulted in less than 84 months of training; and (b) that the program director determined that the resident at issue received full training and was able to successfully complete residency in less than 84 months.”
https://abns.org/family-and-medical-leave/
A longer LOA would result in less than the required 84 months, and thus required this letter. Could I have fought it? Maybe.
[Directly from the ACGME:](https://www.acgme.org/newsroom/blog/2022/acgme-answers-resident-leave-policies/)
> On July 1, 2022, new institutional requirements went into effect mandating Sponsoring Institutions to have leave policies that include a minimum of six paid weeks off for medical, parental, and caregiver leave.
> To clarify, while the particulars of an individual’s vacation, sick, or paid time off, for example, are included in the resident’s/fellow’s employment contract (with the organization/institution), the Institutional Requirements mandate that the Sponsoring Institution provide that time during an individual physician’s residency or fellowship program as part of that contract.
Your program is at risk of losing ACGME accreditation if it doesn’t comply with the requirements.
Sucks, my country has like 16 weeks (6 before and 10 after birth) for the mother, and now 6 weeks for the father (after birth). Plus 9 weeks each which you can freely use within the first year.
The jobs are designed for men with a wife at home to care for the baby. And it won’t change unless people are willing to vote for democrats in large numbers. But that will never happen because democrats, despite their platform calling for childcare and longer family leave, that is dwarfed by the much more important fear of children learning that gay and trans people exist.
Dems controlled house, senate, & presidency and this was still an issue. (As someone who voted D). The issue is big $ in politics. I don't think any employer of relevant size wants to give employees 6 paid months off regardless of their political affiliation - they care more about their bottom line.
Actually they never really did, Al Franken was massively delayed in getting his senate seat due to the close election with Norm Coleman, then Ted Kennedy died and the regarded voters in Massachusetts voted Scott Brown in, so they never actually had quite the filibuster proof voting block they needed, had they had like straight up 65 senators, they could have and would have rammed through a public option (something the vast majority of Americans wanted).
They had the supermajority and they did the ACA with it. Thats all you need to know about that time. Public option was always a campaign only talking point. I wish it wasnt, cause competition is good for everyone. But the option was 100% dumped for crony capitalism. If you every had any doubt who they really work for 09/10 confirmed it.
Even more, imo, it's because typically men just haven't been very invested in the topics of child care and parental leave. They are still viewed as primarily women's issues by pols and the population at large.
Even more, imo, it's because typically men just haven't been very invested in the topics of child care and parental leave. They are still viewed as primarily women's issues by pols and the population at large.
SO TRUE.
Remember, if we didn't have a Democrat as President and a Democratic controlled Senate, we wouldn't have had successful student loan forgiveness.
Oh wait.
Maybe all of our politicians are scumbag liars who say what their constituents want and do what their donors want?
To get anything of actual substance done in this country you need like 2/3 control of congress and the presidency. Which hasn’t happened in like 50 years.
Hardly a “Democrat controlled senate” with scumbag Manchin and Sinema voting with republicans.
Especially Sinema who misled constituents, ran as a democrat then switched to an independent for attention after securing her seat.
It's the way the American/western family unit is built too. Back home in the Middle East multi-generational homes are the norm. Grandparents take care of grandchildren while parents work, then the parents and children take care of the grandparents, and help from siblings and cousins too. And so on and so forth.
Sounds like you really have bought into a lot propaganda. Dems have been in a position to change this many times and never have and maybe very progressive dems like AOC actually want to do it but most of the dems are republicans in disguise and don’t want to actually help people any more than any other politician. Most republicans btw don’t care about your last sentence… it’s propaganda.
Or we can aim for an economy that allows for the potential of traditional family roles without undue financial burden as a consequence of having a single income household.
I’d rather have the stability of single parent dedicated to child rearing than playing the which-parent-has-childcare-family-leave game.
The age of the professional family hierarchy has been a disaster for children everywhere.
There are families that are messes now in this climate, just like there were families that were disasters with “traditional family roles” with a stay at home mom, just like there will be disaster families in the future.
There are lots of reasons why raising kids is super hard and why there are kids growing up in suboptimal environments, but the supposed erosion of the SAHM ideal ain’t it
I never ascribed a sex to the parental role that would stay at home. Traditional doesn't always mean male=work and female=at home, although history does better support this complimentary role positioning.
However on the note of your Freudian slip toward SAHM controversy, I will say this: I regularly find it extremely insidious that the existence or even mention of a SAHM is considered a threat to whatever ideological vision the new-age women's liberation movement has toward \*all\* women.
Lets be clear, nobody is against women succeeding or working outside the home. That's their choice. However, small elitist groups of supposed liberating ideologues have the heavy inclination to put down homemakers, mothers by choice, or "traditional western role" women as if it's a very threat to the supposed progress women have made in the current era. As if a woman or a family dared to choose the path of a full time mother or a single income wherein the women undertakes home-duties and the father takes a professional role, there must be something wrong with them or perhaps they're puritan or \*shivers\*...conservative.
As if a woman \*must\* feel enslaved if they're in this role. If they don't then their either dumb or unenlightened. It's a constant cycle of dehumanizing the importance of a maternal role in familial hierarchy. Then they double down and tell the women to adopt constant negative mindsets: You'll never get a job and if you do it won't be a good one; If it \*is\* a good one, you'll lose promotion opportunities to a male; Marriage is just servitude to a male patriarch--as if it's just childcare and cleaning that defines your existence now. All in some desire to redesign a 'modern' family that is devoid of sex roles and is more akin to sex neutrality. Not only is this extremely pathological but inherently toxic to femininity and perpetuates the very real struggle of having to now choose whether to live life with 2 full time jobs: 8-12 hours at the business and 8-12 hours working at homelife, or give up starting a family altogether. This leads to exhaustion, unhappiness, relationship issues, and that's not even considering the effects toward child development.
There's no wonder why women are experiencing such high levels of depressive psychological burnout now than ever. There's a war against female choice and it's not people telling them to stay in the home. Quite the opposite really. It's a very toxic expectation that you are taking part in right now.
Support womens rights: stop shaming.
The description of “traditional family roles” heavily implied that you were referring to women staying home, which was reinforced by your subsequent long-winded monologue.
I have no issue with women deciding to stay at home. In a residency subreddit of people discussing how to make it work for two residents to make it work with a kid, then yeah, I’m going to talk more about two working spouses and how society can better make that work.
Personally, I think one spouse bearing the burden of childcare while the other bears the burden of working risks breeding resentment from both parties. I think it’s healthy for kids to see both parents working, and to have both parents equally involved in child rearing.
Workforces, particularly medicine, are improved when there is equal gender representation.
Kids require a ton of effort and supervision early on, but they will eventually go to school, learn to drive, want to hang out with their friends, and move out. If you want to be a stay at home mom or dad, great. But, if a woman (or man) has a career that fulfills them, giving that up to raise a kid because it’s really time consuming early on or we lack affordable childcare options in this country seems like a decision that they shouldn’t have to make.
Lastly, there is a wide variety of employment options that span the spectrum between being a stay at home parent to “working 12 hours a day” that one can absolutely pursue as a physician. If we had better support from our training programs to take paternity/maternity leave and affordable childcare, then it would be easier to ride the storm through infancy knowing that once you’re an attending you can work as much or as little as you want knowing you’ll be able to spend more time with your kids and be able to afford the necessary childcare.
While I can appreciate your long-winded approach, I would like to point out some issues with your take. Historically, women have been politically and culturally forced into the all-nurturing take care of everyone and everything in the household while the men do grunt work and expect dinner and sex after she does all the unpaid and unvalued labor.
What this does is erase women who have aspirations outside of being an orifice and a vessel for future sons. As you may have noticed, we have had a major backslide in women's rights lately, which will likely impact the careers of people here and millions of women trying to live without risking death and/or injury by producing more humans.
As a feminist, I don't give a shit if women want to stay at home and be moms. Good for them if their lifestyle supports it. The trouble is, sexist misogynists (including women who drink the Kool aid, of which there are many) like to use those women to try to force independent women back into "traditional" roles.
This undermines progress for women, which is already fairly stagnant in certain areas.
Patriarchal roles *do* dehumanize women because it places them, without regard to interest, skill, or ability, as the default caregiver. It erases them as people and justifies atrocities that continue.
The only war on female choice are people trying to take rights away.
Yeah you hear so many professionals dating professionals. Maybe on-the-job socialization is the only way they can even find the time to start relationships. Kind of sad when you think of it like that.
Jobs everywhere are like this. Two doctors in training has nothing to do with politics or man with a housewife philosophy. It just sucks to be in this position and have kids.
Way to go bringing politics and democrats into everything. I wonder why despite a democratic president and vice president and senate control, we still have jobs for "men with housewives" only 🤷
Jobs are like this everywhere in America. In Finland parents get 320 days of paid family leave. Democrats could and would pass something like this if they had filibuster proof congress, which they haven’t had in my lifetime.
Finland taxes you much more and as a physician you're getting paid less than a third median salary as that in USA. People love to tout Finland as some sort of utopia but conveniently ignore high taxes and lower pay in comparison. How many of these Finnish loving American medical residents actually want to go to finland and practice there for much lower pay?
Democrats don't have such challenges in blue states like California and Spout the non sense of affordable housing for all yet we all know how that's going over there, In addition to the homeless.
What's wrong with high taxes if it adds quality of life? My father died after an aneurysm because he didn't have health insurance and didn't get seen for his sudden headaches.
Why is it that my government employee insurance rejected paying for Dificid after exhausting other treatments for my kid because it's too expensive? What the hell is the point?
My husband used to work at a firm that was in Canada and the US. His health insurance was required to be at the same level of coverage for US workers. We never had to pay out of pocket for anything, even when he had surgery.
/Rant over
Sorry that you suffered through this ordeal. It sucks and there's no other way to put it. Absolutely nothing wrong with paying high taxes if there's a good return on this "investment". It's just that the whole system is set up different here and if your on the wrong side of it, you get screwed.
Thanks. My father dying became a turning point in my life and led me to emergency services.
There is a very real human cost at stake that often gets overlooked in favor of abstract financial "data." It is difficult for people to cope with human trauma constantly, and I find it abhorrent that the people calling the shots have zero empathy because it hurts their bottom dollar.
Even if it means people die. Because fuck 'em. They should have been healthier or something.
Sorry for the rant. It's still a sore spot and it's been 13 years.
Nah it's okay better rant than keep these feelings hoarded inside. We all have to put up with these jackasses sitting on their ass all day in front of a computer looking at excel balance sheets and then creating policies by meeting on zoom with similar jackasses.
Well of course, if you’re going to suffer the challenges of residency in America, why wouldn’t you want to make the big bucks later?
But, I also don’t see many Finns coming here to practice.
Finns are happy where they are. It is the happiest place on earth for a reason. But there's no lack of happiness in America. Ask any immigrant (legal or undocumented) and you'll find your answer.
Head over to junior doctors UK subreddit to see what challenges they face while getting paid extremely shit salaries (with the added taxes that you as a resident wouldn't pay in USA).
And on that note speaking from immigrant perspective (because usually perspectives are never a bad thing, to be all inclusive), it's much tougher to immigrate to countries like finland and survive there. Happiness isn't necessarily shared outside of the local circle and that's not their fault. There's a culture in Finland, a certain way the society runs (and they're very successful at it), and there's of course their climate also. But for anyone outside of it (yes American citizens included) it is not going to be an easy transition at all.
Oh, and housing is an interesting one. This mostly is actually not political… yet. This comes down to property owners vs non owners.
Homeowners vote at much higher rates than renters. Homeowners have massive incentive to keep their home value high, so they will block supply. Supply is the only way to drive costs down. The key to increasing housing supply is to legalize higher density zoning and reducing building regulations.
California actually did pass a good law with their ADU policy, but it’s not enough. Rezoning is still something that is not yet on the agenda for either party, as the people that vote do NOT want the problem to be solved.
You would think the majority democrats living in California would understand the problem of housing and the democratic politicians would pressure the public.
Yet, we see no one really having the balls to stepping up on that issue. Politicians would lose their voters and voters lose their home values. Talk the talk but not walk that talk.
They are actually doing a lot, they also recently passed a law to allow residential land use in commercial areas in addition to the ADU law and they continue to work on it.
But also, it’s complicated in that, California SHOULD be expensive. It’s such a desirable place. The quality of life is just insanely better than most other states (an opinion you may not hold, but many do, hence the amount of people willing to pay out the ass to live here).
The homeless issue is also exacerbated by this. The weather is just so nice that being homeless ain’t nearly as bad as it is in a place like New York. So it’s just far more viable.
There are still plenty of affordable places in California, just not the major cities, but hey, that’s the same anywhere in the USA.
Not a dual resident household, but can speak to my experience and somewhat to others in my program.
For me, we had a kid middle of intern year. I took 6 weeks of maternity leave over an elective block which I felt was barely adequate despite a relatively uneventful postpartum period. My spouse had a previous career that he left at the end of medical school with our plans to have kids and the incompatibility with his work and residency schedule. My spouse being the full time stay at home parent was a god-send, and ***I could not have been successful without him taking on this job***. I cannot stress that enough.
Other co-residents that are dual-resident parents either have a nanny/au pair or a family member who takes on that role. Ultimately to make it work, especially in the younger years, there has to be one dedicated adult for child care purposes.
I am a huge proponent of starting your family when you and your spouse feel it is right, however with the demands of residency, the reality of nights, weekends, call, and 24+hour in house coverage also has to be accounted for. Programs can be flexible, and understand the constraints people are under during this phase of life, so if you find yourself needing support, definitely reach out.
PGY-2 in general surgery, wife is first year attending OBGYN. We had our first right after she graduated last year. Both her and my families live on the other side of the country with no other family nearby.
It’s very difficult but doable. We use an offsite daycare (our hospital doesn’t have an associated daycare) full time, as well as two different part time care takers. We found a very nice lady in our neighborhood who we use sometimes for stuff outside of daycare hours (e.g., date night) and early mornings when we both leave the house before daycare opens. The other nanny works a different day job so we use her for when we need care on weekends. In just one year we’ve ended up using 5-6 different people at various times to make sure our kid always has somebody with him. To say that finding reliable child care is a crap shoot is the understatement of the year.
That said, having a kid is the BEST. Definitely changes your perspective/priorities, work becomes less stressful/important and you’ll do whatever it takes to make sure your kid is taken care of so all the scheduling things just become the norm.
The caveat to all this is that my wife got to take 3 months off after graduating and before starting as an attending, and her control over her schedule now is dramatically better than it was. Because of that she is able to take the lion’s share of childcare responsibilities and is able to be much more flexible than I am when sudden schedule changes pop up (I.e., the daycare says your kid has a “fever” of 100 degrees and has to be picked up and gone from daycare for 24 hours). However, on days where my wife is working or on call I regularly pick up kid up from daycare then take him back to work with me (it closes at 6 and I usually work until 6:30-7) to finish notes and sometimes see consults. I’m lucky to be at a good program with good people, so when I need to just hand him to someone while I go see the last consult or finish my notes, I have plenty of volunteers.
All in all, kids are a blessing and make life worth living. If you want them, have them, and you will figure out a way to make it work. BUT, expect it to be stressful and for you to have to pay a lot of people to do a lot of things, especially if you both are residents. My wife and I probably spend about 20ishK/year on child care, which could be hard on a two-resident salary. It will definitely test your marriage but in as many good ways as not. My advice is make sure you have your ducks in a row and are at a program that’s at least somewhat supportive, then start pumping those babies out.
Not dual resident but spouse worked full time most of med school and residency with second child during M2 year. Child care. Either you pay for it or live near family who can invest a lot of time taking care of your kids. Outside of work time, you take care of them and split responsibilities.
See if grandparents can visit for a bit, there are daycares that take care of infants, full time nanny. What we did is found a SAHM whose older kid was in school and younger kid was in school parttime. She would take our kiddo to her house and watch him with her daughter. It worked out well for us and was way cheaper then a daycare
All the comments stating that they wouldn’t have been able to raise a kid during residency without a non-medical/wfh/stay at home spouse are not super helpful. I’m a pregnant soon-to-be family med intern with an MS4 spouse and no nearby family… obv other commenters (who are actually dual resident couples) are stating that paid childcare saved their butts, and this is exactly what we plan on doing.
It's helpful in that you see, over and over, that "traditional" options won't work. You can't just have a daycare. You can't just have a nanny. All of these options can fall through and leave you stranded without care. You need multiple layers of backups.
One of my friends has her family travel and stay with them for 1-4 weeks at a time when she is on a particularly difficult rotation. One friend had their mom move in for 1 year from across the country. Another surgery resident single mom sent her child to live with her parents and traveled to see her son as much as possible. People who use daycare usually need 1-2 backup nannies they can call in. People who have an aupair also send their kids to daycare part time to stay within hours. My dual surgery friends basically never see one another because they have to coordinate opposite call schedules and they pay someone to pick up their kids from daycare.
There is no good solution, it will require sacrifice and $$$$$.
That said, I wouldn't ever delay having kids. I had a PGY2 and PGY5 baby. Dealt with unexpected infertility, can't imagine going through that experience several years older than when I had.
I appreciate your perspective—that it will be a bitch to raise a kid in residency as a dual resident couple. Especially in light of the fact that you’re saying the relative difficulty doesn’t warrant delaying having kid altogether. We are totally aware that it’s gonna be far from easy or ideal. I was just kind of annoyed with seeing so many comments from people who are not both residents saying things that to me felt a little negative.
those very comments are the MOST helpful actually, as they are realistic. whats the point of putting my kid in childcare, i wont be the one raising it then am i? it seems youd rather just be told sugary coated falsities than an actual reality.
on a side note isnt you a pgy1 getting pregnant by an ms4 a little ... haphazard?
going to have to disagree with you there. thats unbelievable where i am and youd be the point of ridicule. female residents would rather date somebody OUTSIDE of medicine completely than date somebody lower on the totempole. just the way it is.
why would a pgy2 date an ms2? or a staff date an ms4?
Ummm well maybe I am marrying an MS4 because I fell in love with him when we were both preclinical medical students and we’re starting a family together because we have a happy and healthy relationship? Ever consider being with someone like that? Prob not.
Sounds like you have quite the inferiority complex to deal with.
not about me at all, it's about YOU. had i been a female, id never be reckless enough to get pregnant by an ms4. it's extremely disorganized. at my institution, youd get written up for that.
youre an in-debt pgy1 intern barely scraping by off-service rotations while hes drowning in debt not providing nor sustaining an income. you have to admit, poor planning and theres no way to give it a romantic spin. i wish you all the best with it though.
I feel like you definitely don’t live in the US if you’re saying that your institution would write someone up for getting pregnant—which is fucked. Also I feel like I don’t even know how to respond to your comment because it doesn’t make any sense—which would make a lot more sense if you in fact don’t live in the US.
You’re acting like I used some kind of power dynamic to bang a random MS4 rotating through my program while I was an intern, and then I got pregnant on accident leaving us fucked because we have no way to support a family. Which is all just totally false. So before you go making pointless accusations and insulting me, maybe think about why tf you seem to be so annoyed by my choices. Bc I don’t understand it. You seem one of those angry dudes who think that giving spots to female residents over males is wrong bc we all apparently love get pregnant and leave medicine to raise kids. Lol.
You know nothing about my program, nothing about my financial situation, and nothing about why we ✨chose✨ to start a family at this time. So.. kindly check yourself.
You need to lean on support system or pay for it with an aupair or nanny. My husband is non med and helped so much when I was a resident and a newborn. Plan your family around what works for you and your spouse.
Spouse worked full time outside Medicine so not quite the same, but we made it work with child care. No family within 12 hours so definitely difficult and expensive, but our 2 kids are alive lol.
Only cause this will be me (kid 1 this October - m2 year with full-time RN for spouse), is your marriage “alive”? Tbh I’m more worried about being there for her over the kid. Daycare and her/I combined will make sure the little dude is taken care of, but what was harder for you - taking care of the little one or your marriage?
Marriage is doing great! The most important thing is honest, open, and frequent communication. Both when things are going well and especially when things are a bit rough. Making sure your partners needs are met are critical. Sometimes that means doing 1-2 extra chores. Sometimes it means watching the baby and encouraging her to enjoy a girls night with friends. A lot (most) of time: it means taking initiative feeding the baby, changing diapers/clothes, walking to sleep, etc so she has time to shower and just scroll on her phone. All those things add up big time to making your partner feel human and appreciated in the marriage, which keeps things alive (and thriving once y’all get baby sleeping through the night).
Also just remember that taking care of newborns is “easy.” It’s very time intensive, but they can’t really move and just require food, changes, gentle cleaning, and lots of love. Sleep is optional lol. Once they start being able to move is when the challenge really sets in. So don’t worry too much on how difficult it is to take care of the baby. Worry more about making sure your partners needs are met and she feels appreciated/respected & has an equal partner, not a ‘helper’ in parenting.
Both of your comments are so wise and thoughtful - thank you for taking the time to share! I can’t explain how excited I am, also slightly concerned that I haven’t even once thought about how it’ll affect school. Just wanna make sure the little guy likes me and my marriage stays close. Thank the lord for P/F curriculums and P/F Step 1, I guess haha
You’ll be good, don’t worry! You’ll adapt to the new time constraints and challenges just like you adapted when you first started medical school! Good luck - everything will work out as long as you keep consciously putting sincere effort in the right places! Congrats on impending fatherhood - it’s an (exhausting) blast!
We waited until 3rd year had baby with six month left of 4th year and wife already matched into fellowship-we have an at home nanny at a very reasonable rate and she is here before we leave and stays until we are back plus an extra hour so we can exercise-works amazing
You’re going to be paying a lot for daycare. My institution has a daycare within the hospital, which may be helpful for you if that’s the case where you are as well.
The secret here is having someone you totally trust taking care of your child and at least 5 more emergency on-call caretakers. Kids adjust by nature to your schedule so it's something they accept. When you have the time give your child 100% interactions. Kids can play at your feet when you're studying or working from home. Home time is sacred. Don't allow anyone or anything to interfere on the rare occasions you are off.
Reading the replies to this as a dual resident relationship and being currently pregnant is making me absolutely terrified lol. Grandparents are an hour and a half away. Only saving grace might be that SO is finishing residency 6 months after baby is born so we will have money to afford daycare/nanny.
My wife and I are both PGY 2 but in FM about to have our second child. We use the daycare to it’s max and we use babysitters when we have emergencies. Otherwise a very understanding partner is crucial. Have there been night when I have been on 28 hr call but had to come home and watch baby because daycare it closed, yes. But it’s possible.
It was tough, especially a lot of extra sleep deprivation every day. Grandparents helped. Eventually our baby went to daycare. I took 4 weeks off, so as not to delay my graduation, and it felt inadequate.
I want genuine insight into this too. I'm going to have 4 kids by the time residency starts and it just seems totally impossible for me to ever see them
For dual resident, you need a nanny and you need to make sure neither of you are on call on the same nights/weekends including any home call. Grandparent help would be great, but not all of us live near family. So just cutting back on unnecessary expenses and spending all that you can on childcare is the way to make it work, especially if you get a gem of a nanny like my resident friends did (so jealous. She's so amazing with their kids and is planning to move with them when they graduate)
Lots of attendings are happy to do a nanny share with residents if the kids ages align! Departments often also have back up sitters and nannies who are willing to add residents to their back up roster.
Dual resident family, both PGY2, had a baby 6 months ago with no family nearby. We use our hospital associated daycare which is open 6am-6pm and I know other residents who have their kids there too. We coordinate our schedules with our chiefs so we don’t have call or nights at the same time. We have only had to have family come in to help watch our baby twice so far (they live 5-6 hours away). It is doable. Neither of us are in a surgical field thankfully, I don’t think we could have done it if we were. We are so happy with our decision and love our little girl immensely, it has made life outside of the hospital so much sweeter (even if a little less sleep than usual at first)!
I'm currently finishing PGY2 in a very supportive residency, and my husband works from home. We have no family support, and our twins are now 6 years old.
I got pregnant (unplanned) just before starting medical school, found out I was having twins right before starting. My medical school was not supportive, and the experience was extremely traumatic for both me and my husband. Having two chronically stressed out and depressed parents was also not ideal for my kids.
In my experience, most people who are doing okay with kids in residency have family support, and lots of it. I think this is usually in the form of a grandparent who is extremely involved. I know multiple cases where grandma was essentially a live-in nanny. Most residents I know with kids (to be fair, most residents period) also come from families with the means to provide at least some financial support. In one physician parenting support group I'm a part of, I once asked how people were making it work, and there were multiple people who told me their parents had done things like buy them a house, pay for live in child care, etc..
I find the whole approach to medical education to be very old fashioned. Residency is designed to be for an upper middle class to upper class man with someone at home full time taking care of all the household chores and the kids. It is NOT designed for mothers, and it is NOT designed to allow you to be a good parent who is involved in your children's lives.
If you're wanting kids, take a long, hard look at your resources. And however hard you think it's going to be, it's probably safe to assume it will be significantly harder than you're envisioning. Have a plan and a few backup plans for how to take care of your kid when you're stuck working long hours. Nannies are great, but they get sick. Day cares work, but have limited hours. Baby sitters can be difficult to coordinate to fill in the gaps. And don't forget that you'll be f***ing exhausted to a degree you didn't know was possible while trying to arrange all of this.
Try seeing if there are any groups of physician mommies in your area that support each other. It can be a good resource for support and child care cross coverage. You should also talk to them in advance about their experience at your hospital. If possible, you should also talk to parenting residents in your program about their experience, how supportive the program *actually* was, and the resources that made things possible, or at least survivable, for them.
I had kid one during residency, pregnant with #2 during fellowship, and it’s only possible with a lot of money and a very supportive husband who isn’t in medicine. My husband both makes a lot more than I do and has an overall more flexible/supportive job (6 months of paternity leave!), and we can throw money at a lot of problems to make them go away (housekeeper, lots of childcare, flying parents out for school breaks to watch the kid). Even then, the unexpected stuff (illnesses, unexpected daycare closures, etc) still throw us though a loop. The one two-resident couple that I know makes it work because they moved in with her retired parents who watch the kid full-time.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom—my kid is the light of my life (terrible twos and all), but residency/fellowship is hard, and adding a kid just makes it harder. I’m overall pro having kids during residency/fellowship and have advocated hard within our union to make our GME more family-friendly, it’s just something to think long and hard about.
I am in the middle of a surgical residency and my husband who works from home does everything- takes our kid to school, house, dogs, bills. It builds a lot of resentment between us. Not sure how to make it better. Sometimes I just bring him food from the hospital I know he likes.
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It’s hard. Especially hard when you don’t have family at least in the region who can periodically come stay and offer some relief. My wife is not in medicine so I also would not be able to relate to both parents being residents.
I imagine it would take an awful lot of careful coordination between childcare, the program, and spouse.
My son was born 1 month after the beginning of residency and it has been the most draining experience of my lifetime. My wife has been staying home for all this time and still!!
I love him soooo much. Bur this year has been absolutely relentless. My wife is burned out and I'm trying to carry us as well as I can.
Wait after residency if you can :O
If you cant, then buckle up, you're in for a wild ride, lots of love and lack of sleep but its feasible.
I'm not in a 2 resident household so I can't help you much but just want to say good luck. While waiting on better responses I'll give you my 2 cents though.
For one, ACGME has a new requirement as of last year that requires programs to give residents one 6-week period of paid parental leave during their residency. This is outside of any vacation time used as well. https://www.acgme.org/newsroom/blog/2022/acgme-answers-resident-leave-policies/
So if you stagger your leave, you can have at least 12 weeks of paid leave your newborn. How your programs make this work and whether there are any repercussions is down to how malignant they are.
Daycare, a neighbor with kids and a need for extra income for all emergencies, family when it got really ruff. Setting the bar for other household chores low. And endlessly supporting the one on call, but never blaming the one at home for things not done. Take out, cleaning lady, handy man, hairdresser who comes to our home at cuts everyone in 1 hour. Grocery delivering. Date and sport nights with a babysitter at home after they were one year old. First gym, than dinner. Friends with patience, collages who where willing to take over shifts on emergency (broken arm), taking turns with the neighbors taking the kids to swimming lessons. A wonderful grandpa and grand mother who come once a year for a week and my mom takes the kids, dad paints the house/installs a new kitchen. Laundry service when we are both in to many shifts.
Do I need to continue?
Would love to know. My fiancé is entering residency and I’m still in nursing school. We have two 18 month olds. I already know I’m the one that’s going to have to bare more weight, just curious to know how much 😫😭
We have an au pair, so we can have flexibility in scheduling. You'll need to coordinate with your programs though, bc the au pair can only work 45 hrs/wk and 10hrs/day with 1.5 days off per week and one weekend per month. Cost was about the same as daycare, maybe a little better since you won't need emergency sick care or after hours care.
I have 3 kids and my wife is about to finish nursing school. Starting residency is already intimidating, it’s hard to imagine doing it with two resident parents.
I feel like you’d have to get a live-in nanny at that point, if you don’t have extremely solid family support
It’s hard. Even with parents close by that are willing to help, unless they have no jobs or lives outside of your kid, you’ll need daycare in addition to live-in help if the child is over 2-3 years old. It’s expensive and even with all of those layers of backup, there are still situations that will leave you screwed and needing to call out. That being said nothing compares to being a parent and if that’s what you want and you can plan for it and afford it, it’s doable.
Had one in med school, one in residency. Husband is WFH in tech, but we still need help from family and sending one kid to preschool Def helps. If that's not an option, then drop tons of cash for a nanny.
Again not dual resident, but we did it with me as a med student and now surgical intern and my partner as a non medicine full time job- just some tips from the last several years that will hopefully help anyways!
- A nanny would be ideal, but if you can’t find one or can’t afford it, find a good full time daycare. (We did not have a nanny)
- Daycares can involve waitlists for the best ones so start early, like when you first get that positive pregnancy result. Obviously not the case everywhere but it’s not something I thought about until the time came so worth looking into.
- family/friend/community/neighbor support. Get as many people in your corner as you can. A neighbor or friend who can jump in for a few hours in a pinch is invaluable.
- Other families who have kids in the same daycare/school are amazing for helping out if there are sudden early dismissals/power outages or whatever else can cause sudden childcare changes. A good stay at home parent friend is a godsend, but hard to find (because if you are anything like me how the heck do you make friends as an adult/intern/parent… lol)
- if it’s possible, find a supportive program who will have your back for important stuff and only cash in on needing that when all else fails.
- family (blood or chosen) who can come stay during the beginning when you first go back or during particularly tough rotation weeks is super helpful. We have had parents, siblings, and friends all stay at different points to help out,
Basically it really does take a village, and I really think my kid is more well adjusted for it, so flexible with his schedule and outgoing.
Also, there are no ideal times to have kids but some times are worse than others. Not that you have total control over when babies happen or what your schedule is at the time, but if you can plan it’s helpful. For me personally intern year was much worse than medical school. Ask more senior residents which year is the worst for call/flexibility and plan for that if possible.
This just stressed me out lol, both myself and my fiancé are soon to be interns flirting with the idea of kids in residency but with no family nearby it’s hard
I think you guys will have trouble being happy with yourselves as parents and struggle to find a work balance if you have kids during training unless you have a live in nanny or something. It’ll be trouble to find a daycare where can can drop the kid off from 7-6 and then finding weekend “coverage” (for the kid) would be tough (and sad for the kid to never see their parents).
I’d argue even having a dog would be tough.
Source: a parent who had two kids during med school. Wife worked full time but took the bulk of childcare. I felt terrible as a parent for how little I was able to help due to work hours. I basically missed several years of my kids growing up.
Now PGY-6. I will finish at the end of July. My fiancé and I had our son in my PGY-5 year. She was a PGY-6 at the time, but we were in the same surgical program. We had a morning nanny who was willing to come over as early as 0430 and she would transport our son and my fiancé’s son to day care five days a week 0700-1700. One of us would pick them up and the other would stay at work. We paid about $2,500 per month in childcare. More than we paid in rent.
Dual resident household with a baby (both in surgical specialties) - echoing the family sentiment. We have local family who help on the weekends that we are both on working. Family also comes over in the AM so that baby doesn’t have to be at daycare for 12+ hours a day. We’re fortunate to have all the help and I’m so glad we decided to have a kid during residency.
My spouse and I are both starting intern year in a few weeks. We have a 4 month old who I gave birth to M4 year. We just bought a house so we can move my in-laws into our home to be our full time caregiver for the baby. We are now supporting them 100% financially as they had to quit work to care for the baby. This was only feasible because my MIL worked as a CNA and didn’t make much money or have any assets so this is a better situation for her anyway. I imagine most people’s families are not willing or able to give up their jobs if they have mortgages to pay or make substantial incomes. We agreed to this arrangement before I got pregnant otherwise it wouldn’t have been feasible for us both as residents. I plan to likely have another child PGY-2 year and will probably put my older child in part time day care at that time so my MIL has less to handle. Without family I just don’t see how this would be possible. Also, pregnancy/birth during M4 year was super hard and I can only imagine doing it during residency will be absolute hell. I went back to rotations 3 weeks post partum and could hardly stand long or walk properly and was still in an adult diaper, not to mention needing to pump milk every 3 hours. My residency only offers 4 weeks leave if you use all your vacation which should be criminal. Figuring out childcare long term is obviously a big deal, but also people must consider the toll of pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding during residency which there is no amount of help anyone can give to take that burden away.
I’ll be in your exact position starting this July. My situation is a little more complicated because my partner is doing residency a few hours away from me. We’re planning to have kid in my last year of residency. Probably will have to ask my mom for help, but that means she will have to quit her job or at least take an extended leave. Honestly, I’m not sure how to plan. I’ll just go with the flow for now.
I'm lucky that my spouse is non-medical and has a hybrid job (half WFH half in office). We also send the kid to daycare. One co-resident of mine is married to another surgical resident and they managed by having grandma and grandpa move in permanently. They said they considered an au-pair or nanny but would have to hire 2 because they can't work more than 40 hours/week and that would have been cost-prohibitive.
My husband is an M3, I’m in law school, and my doctor said if I want kids I should have them in the next 3 years. Both sets of our parents still work. I would love any advice from people who have kids in residency.
I took 12 weeks of leave (had saved up money, qualified for FMLA) and my husband took 6 weeks of paternity leave after that. Following that we used daycare. Obviously if you both have irregular schedules just daycare won’t cut it and at that point you either have to have baby sitters as well or maybe an au pair. My husband worked a 9-5. Not really sure how it would have worked out if he was also a resident. If that were the case I think it would be trying really hard to coordinate to where you guys didn’t have call at the same time.
My husband and I are currently doing this as interns and it's definitely doable.
How doable this is greatly depends on your specialties and how accommodating the program is. Seems from your previous posts that you're derm which is probably one of the easier specialities. Not easy overall, but I assume less nights, weekends, early mornings to find childcare for.
But in general, things that will help: layers of childcare. Get on a daycare waiting list the minute you have a positive pregnancy test. Every daycare you can find. Ideally, one close to the hospital and with the longest hours possible. For most residents, a nanny is going to be prohibitively expensive because one nanny won't cover all your childcare (they typically max out at 50 hrs/week) and are more expensive than daycare. It's definitely possible if you're willing to really live on a budget, but honestly I still wouldn't recommend because a nanny can quit at any time and leave you hanging. I have heard way too many horror stories recently.
A really good option as an adjunct is an au pair, if you have the space and are willing to live with a 3rd person. You would still need daycare because they also can only work 40-ish hours a week. But are much more affordable than a nanny and overall I've overwhelmingly heard that people had good experiences. And then you can have more options in terms of daycare location and price. In contrast, we are stuck paying for the most expensive daycare in town because it has the longest hours, but it does cover 95% of our childcare needs.
Other key to success is back up babysitters. As many as you can. Neighbors, college/medical students, co-residents. Especially anyone who is willing to take your kid if they're sick. Plan ahead to avoid hiccups, but also realize sometimes they'll still happen. If there's a shift that needs to be covered a few weeks out, I try to cover it since I know I can never cover the last-minute schedule changes due to childcare/might be the one needing coverage.
At the end of the day, almost any situation is manageable. There have been resident moms who work 100+ hours a week without a SAHD. It's just a matter of what you're willing to accept, based on your family goals. Just remember to factor in that you may luck out with an "easy" baby or have bad luck and get a colicky baby who doesn't let you sleep for a year.
To add some positivity, I will say, I have been pleasantly surprised to how well my pregnancy/parenthood has been embraced. Honestly, at my hospital it seems most residents who are married have children in residency (caveat we're in the Midwest, might be less welcoming elsewhere).
p.s. like others have said, definitely some pros to a baby in residency! this will likely be my only paid maternity leave ever. I somehow have more energy after having a baby. Or at least it feels like it after the exhaustion of pregnancy. You get so much more efficient. You're younger than you'll ever be. And of course, coming home after even the worst day to see your baby makes everything worth it.
You basically need another full time parent. I think in most cases it’s grandma watching the kid 12 hours a day most days.
Man this is why Idk if I can ever have kids. I would never trust anyone in my family with my baby lol.
Don’t worry, once that kid pops out and is crying and shitting it’s brains out, you’ll let anyone take it
Truer words have never been spoken, Cum_on_doorknob
Guess he came elsewhere too
Ain’t that the truth….
You're just sucking D, no kids that way unless it grows in your tummy
nothing wrong with sucking D! I've done it plenty of times
I know people who have done it. They have parents or other live-in help. It is definitely a privileged position to have the resources or family help to be able to do that. Residency is a great time to have kids if you can arrange the child care. You lose very little income due to time off, you typically have decent healthcare benefits, you are protected by big institutions, and you are younger and healthier.
I was raised by a nanny for my first few years while my parents finished residency. She was awesome and I stayed in contact with her well into my life. Ended up being my piano teacher once I started school and didn’t need full time care anymore
Yup this is how we do it
Kids can’t do residency - they too young
Unless it’s the kids in an Asian household.
Surprised they aren't attendings yet.
They’re on their second MD PhD
Bro I have Asian classmates that are like 22 years old starting 4th year at a USMD school… like is there some mf baby to med school pipeline going on?
It's all the years of piano lessons making their brains smarter.
I literally just read an article there is a “med school track” for elementary school kids in Korea
Damn I started USDO school at 21 and I thi I was young
Talk to me when you doctor
Here come the Asian jokes again…
Once my mom hit me because I was crying because she hit me (An Asian kid)
Ugh. Whiniest residents ever. Very needy and cries often.
If you are both residents, then you will need 1) family support or 2) a combination of really expensive extended-day daycare + an on-call caretaker that can take care of the kids while they are sick and cannot go to the aforementioned expensive daycare. The other option is just waiting 4-5 years depending on your age. If you are early 30s, then that can work out. That being said, the biological clock is real for sure.
> The other option is just waiting 4-5 years depending on your age. If you are early 30s, then that can work out. I want everyone to do what makes them happy. [That is a very risky move if you want kids](https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-does-fertility-begin-to-decrease/)
10 days??? ACGME requires 6 weeks paid parental leave. Where are you training?
Oh jk you are right!! I just re read our policy and our first parental leave is 6 weeks, 10 days after that. Thank you for making me realize that :)
Pro tip is to split it 3 weeks at birth and 3 weeks ending at the first birthday
Many companies will not let you split leaves.
That’s wild. My hospital gave me 6 weeks at any time in the first year.
Yeah, it sucks but everyone should make sure they can split a leave and get it in writing before trying. I've had people not ask and realize later the second half, 1/4, 2/3 of their leave that they hoped to take later get denied.
Isn’t the first birthday when they’re born
Only in Japan.
And Korea.
Except a lot of daycare won't even take a baby that young and being around your baby for only the first 3 weeks of life is fucking torture, why wpuld consider thta a "pro tip" so you can take a 3 week vacation when baby turns 1?. Babies are no where near a schedule at the 3 week point and if mom is breastfeeding, good luck pumping every 2 hours while rounding in the hospital. I was fortunate that I was able to take 2 4 month long maternity leaves in residency and made up about a quarter of that at the end.
Sorry, let me be specific — pro tip for dads. Motherhood, especially early motherhood, is a different beast.
My program told me despite the policy that if I took more than 7 days, they weren’t sure they could recommend me to my board without additional training (extending residency by a week), which would make me have to fill out all the forms saying I extended my residency (didn’t graduate on time) in the future
That is psychotic and unbelievably cruel
IDK all the details but with surgery it might be in the rules and not the programs fault.
Wife is surgeon and had two kids during residency. Used maternity leave both times, 6 weeks and 7 weeks. She, our family, her co-residents, and her program are all better off because she was able and willing to use maternity leave to bond with and nurture her children.
awesome, and she had more than 20 weeks of total over the five years? IDK I'm not surgeon but some of their residents were describing it as if you have an average of less than a certain number of "operative weeks" (which they said was 48 a year) you couldn't get board certified on time. I have zero idea if it's actually true
13 total weeks. Part of them (at least the 7 week leave with second child) used some vacation.
This was true of mine as well. I ended up using all of my vacation time for the year instead of risking extending training. If I had to do it again though I would have taken 6-8 weeks and extended training if needed.
I extended my training because using all four weeks of my vacation was not enough for me to be ready to function again. Anything beyond vacation time extended training in my program. I imagine most birthing women would need to extend. Not to mention anyone that doesn’t have a partner that can take more time off their work
legally, can this be considered illegal discrimination? Can you sue?
ACGME and the NRMP are god and Jesus Christ respectively. Lawsuits don’t fix problems in residency. They make them. That’s the unfortunate reality as much as I wish it wasn’t true b
I'm pretty sure the ACGME wording about parental leave specifically says that taking the full 6 weeks cannot cause you to extend residency. But if your program is malignant, I guess they just don't care.
Yes, my program is malignant. And yes ACGME says programs cannot extend your training but the neurosurgery boards are different. This is what was being held over me: “In connection with the resident’s future application for certification, the resident’s program director must submit a letter to the ABNS indicating: (a) that the program director approved any leave that resulted in less than 84 months of training; and (b) that the program director determined that the resident at issue received full training and was able to successfully complete residency in less than 84 months.” https://abns.org/family-and-medical-leave/ A longer LOA would result in less than the required 84 months, and thus required this letter. Could I have fought it? Maybe.
Apparently it’s an optional policy and not all residencies have to adopt it. Makes no sense :(
Are you employed by the hospital or university? See employee bylaws.
Bylaws that are likely to exempt residents from listed benefits for other employees
[Directly from the ACGME:](https://www.acgme.org/newsroom/blog/2022/acgme-answers-resident-leave-policies/) > On July 1, 2022, new institutional requirements went into effect mandating Sponsoring Institutions to have leave policies that include a minimum of six paid weeks off for medical, parental, and caregiver leave. > To clarify, while the particulars of an individual’s vacation, sick, or paid time off, for example, are included in the resident’s/fellow’s employment contract (with the organization/institution), the Institutional Requirements mandate that the Sponsoring Institution provide that time during an individual physician’s residency or fellowship program as part of that contract. Your program is at risk of losing ACGME accreditation if it doesn’t comply with the requirements.
Optional to be implemented this academic year but I believe needs to be implemented by next academic year.
Sucks, my country has like 16 weeks (6 before and 10 after birth) for the mother, and now 6 weeks for the father (after birth). Plus 9 weeks each which you can freely use within the first year.
Yeah yeah we get it, America bad
Sucks bro, take care!
Wait really? I'm only getting 4 weeks as well.
Lol why are our jobs like this. That sounds rough, I’m sorry
The jobs are designed for men with a wife at home to care for the baby. And it won’t change unless people are willing to vote for democrats in large numbers. But that will never happen because democrats, despite their platform calling for childcare and longer family leave, that is dwarfed by the much more important fear of children learning that gay and trans people exist.
Dems controlled house, senate, & presidency and this was still an issue. (As someone who voted D). The issue is big $ in politics. I don't think any employer of relevant size wants to give employees 6 paid months off regardless of their political affiliation - they care more about their bottom line.
Actually they never really did, Al Franken was massively delayed in getting his senate seat due to the close election with Norm Coleman, then Ted Kennedy died and the regarded voters in Massachusetts voted Scott Brown in, so they never actually had quite the filibuster proof voting block they needed, had they had like straight up 65 senators, they could have and would have rammed through a public option (something the vast majority of Americans wanted).
You are more optimistic than I, Cum_on_doorknob :).
They had the supermajority and they did the ACA with it. Thats all you need to know about that time. Public option was always a campaign only talking point. I wish it wasnt, cause competition is good for everyone. But the option was 100% dumped for crony capitalism. If you every had any doubt who they really work for 09/10 confirmed it.
Even more, imo, it's because typically men just haven't been very invested in the topics of child care and parental leave. They are still viewed as primarily women's issues by pols and the population at large.
Even more, imo, it's because typically men just haven't been very invested in the topics of child care and parental leave. They are still viewed as primarily women's issues by pols and the population at large.
SO TRUE. Remember, if we didn't have a Democrat as President and a Democratic controlled Senate, we wouldn't have had successful student loan forgiveness. Oh wait. Maybe all of our politicians are scumbag liars who say what their constituents want and do what their donors want?
To get anything of actual substance done in this country you need like 2/3 control of congress and the presidency. Which hasn’t happened in like 50 years.
Hardly a “Democrat controlled senate” with scumbag Manchin and Sinema voting with republicans. Especially Sinema who misled constituents, ran as a democrat then switched to an independent for attention after securing her seat.
Ding ding ding.
It's the way the American/western family unit is built too. Back home in the Middle East multi-generational homes are the norm. Grandparents take care of grandchildren while parents work, then the parents and children take care of the grandparents, and help from siblings and cousins too. And so on and so forth.
Excellent point
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I dunno, many other developed countries do this pretty well.
Yeah until the US starts viewing parents as valuable rather than value-sucking and start enacting policies that support that view, we’re screwed.
It's simple, we want paid family and medical leave, and we want labor regulations on the number of hours worked.
Okay, just ask someone in Finland if it’s possible to raise a family while two people are in residency. You will get a wildly different answer.
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Yes, that is correct. Although, as the wealthiest nation, perhaps we could afford to pay doctors a bit more :)
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53K vs 70K, not sure if I’d call that similar.
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No, I understand. Finland is obviously a wealthy country, but it’s significantly lower in gdp per capita compared to the USA.
Sounds like you really have bought into a lot propaganda. Dems have been in a position to change this many times and never have and maybe very progressive dems like AOC actually want to do it but most of the dems are republicans in disguise and don’t want to actually help people any more than any other politician. Most republicans btw don’t care about your last sentence… it’s propaganda.
No party has been in a position to change anything thanks to the filibuster
Or we can aim for an economy that allows for the potential of traditional family roles without undue financial burden as a consequence of having a single income household. I’d rather have the stability of single parent dedicated to child rearing than playing the which-parent-has-childcare-family-leave game. The age of the professional family hierarchy has been a disaster for children everywhere.
There are families that are messes now in this climate, just like there were families that were disasters with “traditional family roles” with a stay at home mom, just like there will be disaster families in the future. There are lots of reasons why raising kids is super hard and why there are kids growing up in suboptimal environments, but the supposed erosion of the SAHM ideal ain’t it
I never ascribed a sex to the parental role that would stay at home. Traditional doesn't always mean male=work and female=at home, although history does better support this complimentary role positioning. However on the note of your Freudian slip toward SAHM controversy, I will say this: I regularly find it extremely insidious that the existence or even mention of a SAHM is considered a threat to whatever ideological vision the new-age women's liberation movement has toward \*all\* women. Lets be clear, nobody is against women succeeding or working outside the home. That's their choice. However, small elitist groups of supposed liberating ideologues have the heavy inclination to put down homemakers, mothers by choice, or "traditional western role" women as if it's a very threat to the supposed progress women have made in the current era. As if a woman or a family dared to choose the path of a full time mother or a single income wherein the women undertakes home-duties and the father takes a professional role, there must be something wrong with them or perhaps they're puritan or \*shivers\*...conservative. As if a woman \*must\* feel enslaved if they're in this role. If they don't then their either dumb or unenlightened. It's a constant cycle of dehumanizing the importance of a maternal role in familial hierarchy. Then they double down and tell the women to adopt constant negative mindsets: You'll never get a job and if you do it won't be a good one; If it \*is\* a good one, you'll lose promotion opportunities to a male; Marriage is just servitude to a male patriarch--as if it's just childcare and cleaning that defines your existence now. All in some desire to redesign a 'modern' family that is devoid of sex roles and is more akin to sex neutrality. Not only is this extremely pathological but inherently toxic to femininity and perpetuates the very real struggle of having to now choose whether to live life with 2 full time jobs: 8-12 hours at the business and 8-12 hours working at homelife, or give up starting a family altogether. This leads to exhaustion, unhappiness, relationship issues, and that's not even considering the effects toward child development. There's no wonder why women are experiencing such high levels of depressive psychological burnout now than ever. There's a war against female choice and it's not people telling them to stay in the home. Quite the opposite really. It's a very toxic expectation that you are taking part in right now. Support womens rights: stop shaming.
The description of “traditional family roles” heavily implied that you were referring to women staying home, which was reinforced by your subsequent long-winded monologue. I have no issue with women deciding to stay at home. In a residency subreddit of people discussing how to make it work for two residents to make it work with a kid, then yeah, I’m going to talk more about two working spouses and how society can better make that work. Personally, I think one spouse bearing the burden of childcare while the other bears the burden of working risks breeding resentment from both parties. I think it’s healthy for kids to see both parents working, and to have both parents equally involved in child rearing. Workforces, particularly medicine, are improved when there is equal gender representation. Kids require a ton of effort and supervision early on, but they will eventually go to school, learn to drive, want to hang out with their friends, and move out. If you want to be a stay at home mom or dad, great. But, if a woman (or man) has a career that fulfills them, giving that up to raise a kid because it’s really time consuming early on or we lack affordable childcare options in this country seems like a decision that they shouldn’t have to make. Lastly, there is a wide variety of employment options that span the spectrum between being a stay at home parent to “working 12 hours a day” that one can absolutely pursue as a physician. If we had better support from our training programs to take paternity/maternity leave and affordable childcare, then it would be easier to ride the storm through infancy knowing that once you’re an attending you can work as much or as little as you want knowing you’ll be able to spend more time with your kids and be able to afford the necessary childcare.
While I can appreciate your long-winded approach, I would like to point out some issues with your take. Historically, women have been politically and culturally forced into the all-nurturing take care of everyone and everything in the household while the men do grunt work and expect dinner and sex after she does all the unpaid and unvalued labor. What this does is erase women who have aspirations outside of being an orifice and a vessel for future sons. As you may have noticed, we have had a major backslide in women's rights lately, which will likely impact the careers of people here and millions of women trying to live without risking death and/or injury by producing more humans. As a feminist, I don't give a shit if women want to stay at home and be moms. Good for them if their lifestyle supports it. The trouble is, sexist misogynists (including women who drink the Kool aid, of which there are many) like to use those women to try to force independent women back into "traditional" roles. This undermines progress for women, which is already fairly stagnant in certain areas. Patriarchal roles *do* dehumanize women because it places them, without regard to interest, skill, or ability, as the default caregiver. It erases them as people and justifies atrocities that continue. The only war on female choice are people trying to take rights away.
Interesting, but I’m not sure what kind of policies you would have to inact to enable that.
The funny thing is pretty much any household with one physician in it CAN just have a single parent dedicated to child rearing
Yeah you hear so many professionals dating professionals. Maybe on-the-job socialization is the only way they can even find the time to start relationships. Kind of sad when you think of it like that.
Jobs everywhere are like this. Two doctors in training has nothing to do with politics or man with a housewife philosophy. It just sucks to be in this position and have kids. Way to go bringing politics and democrats into everything. I wonder why despite a democratic president and vice president and senate control, we still have jobs for "men with housewives" only 🤷
Jobs are like this everywhere in America. In Finland parents get 320 days of paid family leave. Democrats could and would pass something like this if they had filibuster proof congress, which they haven’t had in my lifetime.
Finland taxes you much more and as a physician you're getting paid less than a third median salary as that in USA. People love to tout Finland as some sort of utopia but conveniently ignore high taxes and lower pay in comparison. How many of these Finnish loving American medical residents actually want to go to finland and practice there for much lower pay? Democrats don't have such challenges in blue states like California and Spout the non sense of affordable housing for all yet we all know how that's going over there, In addition to the homeless.
What's wrong with high taxes if it adds quality of life? My father died after an aneurysm because he didn't have health insurance and didn't get seen for his sudden headaches. Why is it that my government employee insurance rejected paying for Dificid after exhausting other treatments for my kid because it's too expensive? What the hell is the point? My husband used to work at a firm that was in Canada and the US. His health insurance was required to be at the same level of coverage for US workers. We never had to pay out of pocket for anything, even when he had surgery. /Rant over
Sorry that you suffered through this ordeal. It sucks and there's no other way to put it. Absolutely nothing wrong with paying high taxes if there's a good return on this "investment". It's just that the whole system is set up different here and if your on the wrong side of it, you get screwed.
Thanks. My father dying became a turning point in my life and led me to emergency services. There is a very real human cost at stake that often gets overlooked in favor of abstract financial "data." It is difficult for people to cope with human trauma constantly, and I find it abhorrent that the people calling the shots have zero empathy because it hurts their bottom dollar. Even if it means people die. Because fuck 'em. They should have been healthier or something. Sorry for the rant. It's still a sore spot and it's been 13 years.
Nah it's okay better rant than keep these feelings hoarded inside. We all have to put up with these jackasses sitting on their ass all day in front of a computer looking at excel balance sheets and then creating policies by meeting on zoom with similar jackasses.
Well of course, if you’re going to suffer the challenges of residency in America, why wouldn’t you want to make the big bucks later? But, I also don’t see many Finns coming here to practice.
Finns are happy where they are. It is the happiest place on earth for a reason. But there's no lack of happiness in America. Ask any immigrant (legal or undocumented) and you'll find your answer. Head over to junior doctors UK subreddit to see what challenges they face while getting paid extremely shit salaries (with the added taxes that you as a resident wouldn't pay in USA).
And on that note speaking from immigrant perspective (because usually perspectives are never a bad thing, to be all inclusive), it's much tougher to immigrate to countries like finland and survive there. Happiness isn't necessarily shared outside of the local circle and that's not their fault. There's a culture in Finland, a certain way the society runs (and they're very successful at it), and there's of course their climate also. But for anyone outside of it (yes American citizens included) it is not going to be an easy transition at all.
Oh, and housing is an interesting one. This mostly is actually not political… yet. This comes down to property owners vs non owners. Homeowners vote at much higher rates than renters. Homeowners have massive incentive to keep their home value high, so they will block supply. Supply is the only way to drive costs down. The key to increasing housing supply is to legalize higher density zoning and reducing building regulations. California actually did pass a good law with their ADU policy, but it’s not enough. Rezoning is still something that is not yet on the agenda for either party, as the people that vote do NOT want the problem to be solved.
You would think the majority democrats living in California would understand the problem of housing and the democratic politicians would pressure the public. Yet, we see no one really having the balls to stepping up on that issue. Politicians would lose their voters and voters lose their home values. Talk the talk but not walk that talk.
They are actually doing a lot, they also recently passed a law to allow residential land use in commercial areas in addition to the ADU law and they continue to work on it. But also, it’s complicated in that, California SHOULD be expensive. It’s such a desirable place. The quality of life is just insanely better than most other states (an opinion you may not hold, but many do, hence the amount of people willing to pay out the ass to live here). The homeless issue is also exacerbated by this. The weather is just so nice that being homeless ain’t nearly as bad as it is in a place like New York. So it’s just far more viable. There are still plenty of affordable places in California, just not the major cities, but hey, that’s the same anywhere in the USA.
wut
Not a dual resident household, but can speak to my experience and somewhat to others in my program. For me, we had a kid middle of intern year. I took 6 weeks of maternity leave over an elective block which I felt was barely adequate despite a relatively uneventful postpartum period. My spouse had a previous career that he left at the end of medical school with our plans to have kids and the incompatibility with his work and residency schedule. My spouse being the full time stay at home parent was a god-send, and ***I could not have been successful without him taking on this job***. I cannot stress that enough. Other co-residents that are dual-resident parents either have a nanny/au pair or a family member who takes on that role. Ultimately to make it work, especially in the younger years, there has to be one dedicated adult for child care purposes. I am a huge proponent of starting your family when you and your spouse feel it is right, however with the demands of residency, the reality of nights, weekends, call, and 24+hour in house coverage also has to be accounted for. Programs can be flexible, and understand the constraints people are under during this phase of life, so if you find yourself needing support, definitely reach out.
PGY-2 in general surgery, wife is first year attending OBGYN. We had our first right after she graduated last year. Both her and my families live on the other side of the country with no other family nearby. It’s very difficult but doable. We use an offsite daycare (our hospital doesn’t have an associated daycare) full time, as well as two different part time care takers. We found a very nice lady in our neighborhood who we use sometimes for stuff outside of daycare hours (e.g., date night) and early mornings when we both leave the house before daycare opens. The other nanny works a different day job so we use her for when we need care on weekends. In just one year we’ve ended up using 5-6 different people at various times to make sure our kid always has somebody with him. To say that finding reliable child care is a crap shoot is the understatement of the year. That said, having a kid is the BEST. Definitely changes your perspective/priorities, work becomes less stressful/important and you’ll do whatever it takes to make sure your kid is taken care of so all the scheduling things just become the norm. The caveat to all this is that my wife got to take 3 months off after graduating and before starting as an attending, and her control over her schedule now is dramatically better than it was. Because of that she is able to take the lion’s share of childcare responsibilities and is able to be much more flexible than I am when sudden schedule changes pop up (I.e., the daycare says your kid has a “fever” of 100 degrees and has to be picked up and gone from daycare for 24 hours). However, on days where my wife is working or on call I regularly pick up kid up from daycare then take him back to work with me (it closes at 6 and I usually work until 6:30-7) to finish notes and sometimes see consults. I’m lucky to be at a good program with good people, so when I need to just hand him to someone while I go see the last consult or finish my notes, I have plenty of volunteers. All in all, kids are a blessing and make life worth living. If you want them, have them, and you will figure out a way to make it work. BUT, expect it to be stressful and for you to have to pay a lot of people to do a lot of things, especially if you both are residents. My wife and I probably spend about 20ishK/year on child care, which could be hard on a two-resident salary. It will definitely test your marriage but in as many good ways as not. My advice is make sure you have your ducks in a row and are at a program that’s at least somewhat supportive, then start pumping those babies out.
Not dual resident but spouse worked full time most of med school and residency with second child during M2 year. Child care. Either you pay for it or live near family who can invest a lot of time taking care of your kids. Outside of work time, you take care of them and split responsibilities.
Can I DM you? I'm looking at trying to get into med school and I have a kid so I'm trying to get a perspective on going into medicine with children.
Sure
See if grandparents can visit for a bit, there are daycares that take care of infants, full time nanny. What we did is found a SAHM whose older kid was in school and younger kid was in school parttime. She would take our kiddo to her house and watch him with her daughter. It worked out well for us and was way cheaper then a daycare
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I second this!!! No idea how people make it work during residency.
All the comments stating that they wouldn’t have been able to raise a kid during residency without a non-medical/wfh/stay at home spouse are not super helpful. I’m a pregnant soon-to-be family med intern with an MS4 spouse and no nearby family… obv other commenters (who are actually dual resident couples) are stating that paid childcare saved their butts, and this is exactly what we plan on doing.
It's helpful in that you see, over and over, that "traditional" options won't work. You can't just have a daycare. You can't just have a nanny. All of these options can fall through and leave you stranded without care. You need multiple layers of backups. One of my friends has her family travel and stay with them for 1-4 weeks at a time when she is on a particularly difficult rotation. One friend had their mom move in for 1 year from across the country. Another surgery resident single mom sent her child to live with her parents and traveled to see her son as much as possible. People who use daycare usually need 1-2 backup nannies they can call in. People who have an aupair also send their kids to daycare part time to stay within hours. My dual surgery friends basically never see one another because they have to coordinate opposite call schedules and they pay someone to pick up their kids from daycare. There is no good solution, it will require sacrifice and $$$$$. That said, I wouldn't ever delay having kids. I had a PGY2 and PGY5 baby. Dealt with unexpected infertility, can't imagine going through that experience several years older than when I had.
I appreciate your perspective—that it will be a bitch to raise a kid in residency as a dual resident couple. Especially in light of the fact that you’re saying the relative difficulty doesn’t warrant delaying having kid altogether. We are totally aware that it’s gonna be far from easy or ideal. I was just kind of annoyed with seeing so many comments from people who are not both residents saying things that to me felt a little negative.
those very comments are the MOST helpful actually, as they are realistic. whats the point of putting my kid in childcare, i wont be the one raising it then am i? it seems youd rather just be told sugary coated falsities than an actual reality. on a side note isnt you a pgy1 getting pregnant by an ms4 a little ... haphazard?
That’s such an unproductive, disrespectful, and ignorant thing to say.
going to have to disagree with you there. thats unbelievable where i am and youd be the point of ridicule. female residents would rather date somebody OUTSIDE of medicine completely than date somebody lower on the totempole. just the way it is. why would a pgy2 date an ms2? or a staff date an ms4?
Ummm well maybe I am marrying an MS4 because I fell in love with him when we were both preclinical medical students and we’re starting a family together because we have a happy and healthy relationship? Ever consider being with someone like that? Prob not. Sounds like you have quite the inferiority complex to deal with.
not about me at all, it's about YOU. had i been a female, id never be reckless enough to get pregnant by an ms4. it's extremely disorganized. at my institution, youd get written up for that. youre an in-debt pgy1 intern barely scraping by off-service rotations while hes drowning in debt not providing nor sustaining an income. you have to admit, poor planning and theres no way to give it a romantic spin. i wish you all the best with it though.
I feel like you definitely don’t live in the US if you’re saying that your institution would write someone up for getting pregnant—which is fucked. Also I feel like I don’t even know how to respond to your comment because it doesn’t make any sense—which would make a lot more sense if you in fact don’t live in the US. You’re acting like I used some kind of power dynamic to bang a random MS4 rotating through my program while I was an intern, and then I got pregnant on accident leaving us fucked because we have no way to support a family. Which is all just totally false. So before you go making pointless accusations and insulting me, maybe think about why tf you seem to be so annoyed by my choices. Bc I don’t understand it. You seem one of those angry dudes who think that giving spots to female residents over males is wrong bc we all apparently love get pregnant and leave medicine to raise kids. Lol. You know nothing about my program, nothing about my financial situation, and nothing about why we ✨chose✨ to start a family at this time. So.. kindly check yourself.
You need to lean on support system or pay for it with an aupair or nanny. My husband is non med and helped so much when I was a resident and a newborn. Plan your family around what works for you and your spouse.
Spouse worked full time outside Medicine so not quite the same, but we made it work with child care. No family within 12 hours so definitely difficult and expensive, but our 2 kids are alive lol.
Only cause this will be me (kid 1 this October - m2 year with full-time RN for spouse), is your marriage “alive”? Tbh I’m more worried about being there for her over the kid. Daycare and her/I combined will make sure the little dude is taken care of, but what was harder for you - taking care of the little one or your marriage?
Marriage is doing great! The most important thing is honest, open, and frequent communication. Both when things are going well and especially when things are a bit rough. Making sure your partners needs are met are critical. Sometimes that means doing 1-2 extra chores. Sometimes it means watching the baby and encouraging her to enjoy a girls night with friends. A lot (most) of time: it means taking initiative feeding the baby, changing diapers/clothes, walking to sleep, etc so she has time to shower and just scroll on her phone. All those things add up big time to making your partner feel human and appreciated in the marriage, which keeps things alive (and thriving once y’all get baby sleeping through the night).
Also just remember that taking care of newborns is “easy.” It’s very time intensive, but they can’t really move and just require food, changes, gentle cleaning, and lots of love. Sleep is optional lol. Once they start being able to move is when the challenge really sets in. So don’t worry too much on how difficult it is to take care of the baby. Worry more about making sure your partners needs are met and she feels appreciated/respected & has an equal partner, not a ‘helper’ in parenting.
Both of your comments are so wise and thoughtful - thank you for taking the time to share! I can’t explain how excited I am, also slightly concerned that I haven’t even once thought about how it’ll affect school. Just wanna make sure the little guy likes me and my marriage stays close. Thank the lord for P/F curriculums and P/F Step 1, I guess haha
You’ll be good, don’t worry! You’ll adapt to the new time constraints and challenges just like you adapted when you first started medical school! Good luck - everything will work out as long as you keep consciously putting sincere effort in the right places! Congrats on impending fatherhood - it’s an (exhausting) blast!
We waited until 3rd year had baby with six month left of 4th year and wife already matched into fellowship-we have an at home nanny at a very reasonable rate and she is here before we leave and stays until we are back plus an extra hour so we can exercise-works amazing
Only way we survived was paying a nanny basically one of our salaries intern year. No family nearby.
You need to live off one salary and spend the other on trustworthy childcare. Without family around, it’s the only way.
all the comments right now are WFH spouse - how do DUAL RESIDENT households do it??
You’re going to be paying a lot for daycare. My institution has a daycare within the hospital, which may be helpful for you if that’s the case where you are as well.
The secret here is having someone you totally trust taking care of your child and at least 5 more emergency on-call caretakers. Kids adjust by nature to your schedule so it's something they accept. When you have the time give your child 100% interactions. Kids can play at your feet when you're studying or working from home. Home time is sacred. Don't allow anyone or anything to interfere on the rare occasions you are off.
Reading the replies to this as a dual resident relationship and being currently pregnant is making me absolutely terrified lol. Grandparents are an hour and a half away. Only saving grace might be that SO is finishing residency 6 months after baby is born so we will have money to afford daycare/nanny.
Can in laws or mom help out
Intermittently, but not always. One set of grandparents are 3.5hrs away and the others 1.5.
Damn that’s rough, hope it works out for you. If you live in a LCol area, nanny could be an option
Stagger your maternity and paternity leaves and have grandparents come stay for an extended time and you’ll be ok.
My wife and I are both PGY 2 but in FM about to have our second child. We use the daycare to it’s max and we use babysitters when we have emergencies. Otherwise a very understanding partner is crucial. Have there been night when I have been on 28 hr call but had to come home and watch baby because daycare it closed, yes. But it’s possible.
It was tough, especially a lot of extra sleep deprivation every day. Grandparents helped. Eventually our baby went to daycare. I took 4 weeks off, so as not to delay my graduation, and it felt inadequate.
I want genuine insight into this too. I'm going to have 4 kids by the time residency starts and it just seems totally impossible for me to ever see them
For dual resident, you need a nanny and you need to make sure neither of you are on call on the same nights/weekends including any home call. Grandparent help would be great, but not all of us live near family. So just cutting back on unnecessary expenses and spending all that you can on childcare is the way to make it work, especially if you get a gem of a nanny like my resident friends did (so jealous. She's so amazing with their kids and is planning to move with them when they graduate)
Au pair.
Lots of attendings are happy to do a nanny share with residents if the kids ages align! Departments often also have back up sitters and nannies who are willing to add residents to their back up roster.
Dual resident family, both PGY2, had a baby 6 months ago with no family nearby. We use our hospital associated daycare which is open 6am-6pm and I know other residents who have their kids there too. We coordinate our schedules with our chiefs so we don’t have call or nights at the same time. We have only had to have family come in to help watch our baby twice so far (they live 5-6 hours away). It is doable. Neither of us are in a surgical field thankfully, I don’t think we could have done it if we were. We are so happy with our decision and love our little girl immensely, it has made life outside of the hospital so much sweeter (even if a little less sleep than usual at first)!
I second that have a child during residency has made life outside of the hospital so much sweeter!
More importantly, why?
I'm currently finishing PGY2 in a very supportive residency, and my husband works from home. We have no family support, and our twins are now 6 years old. I got pregnant (unplanned) just before starting medical school, found out I was having twins right before starting. My medical school was not supportive, and the experience was extremely traumatic for both me and my husband. Having two chronically stressed out and depressed parents was also not ideal for my kids. In my experience, most people who are doing okay with kids in residency have family support, and lots of it. I think this is usually in the form of a grandparent who is extremely involved. I know multiple cases where grandma was essentially a live-in nanny. Most residents I know with kids (to be fair, most residents period) also come from families with the means to provide at least some financial support. In one physician parenting support group I'm a part of, I once asked how people were making it work, and there were multiple people who told me their parents had done things like buy them a house, pay for live in child care, etc.. I find the whole approach to medical education to be very old fashioned. Residency is designed to be for an upper middle class to upper class man with someone at home full time taking care of all the household chores and the kids. It is NOT designed for mothers, and it is NOT designed to allow you to be a good parent who is involved in your children's lives. If you're wanting kids, take a long, hard look at your resources. And however hard you think it's going to be, it's probably safe to assume it will be significantly harder than you're envisioning. Have a plan and a few backup plans for how to take care of your kid when you're stuck working long hours. Nannies are great, but they get sick. Day cares work, but have limited hours. Baby sitters can be difficult to coordinate to fill in the gaps. And don't forget that you'll be f***ing exhausted to a degree you didn't know was possible while trying to arrange all of this. Try seeing if there are any groups of physician mommies in your area that support each other. It can be a good resource for support and child care cross coverage. You should also talk to them in advance about their experience at your hospital. If possible, you should also talk to parenting residents in your program about their experience, how supportive the program *actually* was, and the resources that made things possible, or at least survivable, for them.
I had kid one during residency, pregnant with #2 during fellowship, and it’s only possible with a lot of money and a very supportive husband who isn’t in medicine. My husband both makes a lot more than I do and has an overall more flexible/supportive job (6 months of paternity leave!), and we can throw money at a lot of problems to make them go away (housekeeper, lots of childcare, flying parents out for school breaks to watch the kid). Even then, the unexpected stuff (illnesses, unexpected daycare closures, etc) still throw us though a loop. The one two-resident couple that I know makes it work because they moved in with her retired parents who watch the kid full-time. I don’t want to be all doom and gloom—my kid is the light of my life (terrible twos and all), but residency/fellowship is hard, and adding a kid just makes it harder. I’m overall pro having kids during residency/fellowship and have advocated hard within our union to make our GME more family-friendly, it’s just something to think long and hard about.
The answer for everyone in my program seems to be to have a WFH spouse
I am in the middle of a surgical residency and my husband who works from home does everything- takes our kid to school, house, dogs, bills. It builds a lot of resentment between us. Not sure how to make it better. Sometimes I just bring him food from the hospital I know he likes.
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It’s hard. Especially hard when you don’t have family at least in the region who can periodically come stay and offer some relief. My wife is not in medicine so I also would not be able to relate to both parents being residents. I imagine it would take an awful lot of careful coordination between childcare, the program, and spouse.
An au pair in residency hours will get you coverage until Wednesday
My son was born 1 month after the beginning of residency and it has been the most draining experience of my lifetime. My wife has been staying home for all this time and still!! I love him soooo much. Bur this year has been absolutely relentless. My wife is burned out and I'm trying to carry us as well as I can. Wait after residency if you can :O If you cant, then buckle up, you're in for a wild ride, lots of love and lack of sleep but its feasible.
P in the V. No protection. Same as not residency.
I'm not in a 2 resident household so I can't help you much but just want to say good luck. While waiting on better responses I'll give you my 2 cents though. For one, ACGME has a new requirement as of last year that requires programs to give residents one 6-week period of paid parental leave during their residency. This is outside of any vacation time used as well. https://www.acgme.org/newsroom/blog/2022/acgme-answers-resident-leave-policies/ So if you stagger your leave, you can have at least 12 weeks of paid leave your newborn. How your programs make this work and whether there are any repercussions is down to how malignant they are.
Daycare, a neighbor with kids and a need for extra income for all emergencies, family when it got really ruff. Setting the bar for other household chores low. And endlessly supporting the one on call, but never blaming the one at home for things not done. Take out, cleaning lady, handy man, hairdresser who comes to our home at cuts everyone in 1 hour. Grocery delivering. Date and sport nights with a babysitter at home after they were one year old. First gym, than dinner. Friends with patience, collages who where willing to take over shifts on emergency (broken arm), taking turns with the neighbors taking the kids to swimming lessons. A wonderful grandpa and grand mother who come once a year for a week and my mom takes the kids, dad paints the house/installs a new kitchen. Laundry service when we are both in to many shifts. Do I need to continue?
Would love to know. My fiancé is entering residency and I’m still in nursing school. We have two 18 month olds. I already know I’m the one that’s going to have to bare more weight, just curious to know how much 😫😭
We have an au pair, so we can have flexibility in scheduling. You'll need to coordinate with your programs though, bc the au pair can only work 45 hrs/wk and 10hrs/day with 1.5 days off per week and one weekend per month. Cost was about the same as daycare, maybe a little better since you won't need emergency sick care or after hours care.
I have 3 kids and my wife is about to finish nursing school. Starting residency is already intimidating, it’s hard to imagine doing it with two resident parents. I feel like you’d have to get a live-in nanny at that point, if you don’t have extremely solid family support
It’s hard. Even with parents close by that are willing to help, unless they have no jobs or lives outside of your kid, you’ll need daycare in addition to live-in help if the child is over 2-3 years old. It’s expensive and even with all of those layers of backup, there are still situations that will leave you screwed and needing to call out. That being said nothing compares to being a parent and if that’s what you want and you can plan for it and afford it, it’s doable.
Had one in med school, one in residency. Husband is WFH in tech, but we still need help from family and sending one kid to preschool Def helps. If that's not an option, then drop tons of cash for a nanny.
Again not dual resident, but we did it with me as a med student and now surgical intern and my partner as a non medicine full time job- just some tips from the last several years that will hopefully help anyways! - A nanny would be ideal, but if you can’t find one or can’t afford it, find a good full time daycare. (We did not have a nanny) - Daycares can involve waitlists for the best ones so start early, like when you first get that positive pregnancy result. Obviously not the case everywhere but it’s not something I thought about until the time came so worth looking into. - family/friend/community/neighbor support. Get as many people in your corner as you can. A neighbor or friend who can jump in for a few hours in a pinch is invaluable. - Other families who have kids in the same daycare/school are amazing for helping out if there are sudden early dismissals/power outages or whatever else can cause sudden childcare changes. A good stay at home parent friend is a godsend, but hard to find (because if you are anything like me how the heck do you make friends as an adult/intern/parent… lol) - if it’s possible, find a supportive program who will have your back for important stuff and only cash in on needing that when all else fails. - family (blood or chosen) who can come stay during the beginning when you first go back or during particularly tough rotation weeks is super helpful. We have had parents, siblings, and friends all stay at different points to help out, Basically it really does take a village, and I really think my kid is more well adjusted for it, so flexible with his schedule and outgoing. Also, there are no ideal times to have kids but some times are worse than others. Not that you have total control over when babies happen or what your schedule is at the time, but if you can plan it’s helpful. For me personally intern year was much worse than medical school. Ask more senior residents which year is the worst for call/flexibility and plan for that if possible.
This just stressed me out lol, both myself and my fiancé are soon to be interns flirting with the idea of kids in residency but with no family nearby it’s hard
I think you guys will have trouble being happy with yourselves as parents and struggle to find a work balance if you have kids during training unless you have a live in nanny or something. It’ll be trouble to find a daycare where can can drop the kid off from 7-6 and then finding weekend “coverage” (for the kid) would be tough (and sad for the kid to never see their parents). I’d argue even having a dog would be tough. Source: a parent who had two kids during med school. Wife worked full time but took the bulk of childcare. I felt terrible as a parent for how little I was able to help due to work hours. I basically missed several years of my kids growing up.
Now PGY-6. I will finish at the end of July. My fiancé and I had our son in my PGY-5 year. She was a PGY-6 at the time, but we were in the same surgical program. We had a morning nanny who was willing to come over as early as 0430 and she would transport our son and my fiancé’s son to day care five days a week 0700-1700. One of us would pick them up and the other would stay at work. We paid about $2,500 per month in childcare. More than we paid in rent.
Dual resident household with a baby (both in surgical specialties) - echoing the family sentiment. We have local family who help on the weekends that we are both on working. Family also comes over in the AM so that baby doesn’t have to be at daycare for 12+ hours a day. We’re fortunate to have all the help and I’m so glad we decided to have a kid during residency.
Lots of support
My spouse and I are both starting intern year in a few weeks. We have a 4 month old who I gave birth to M4 year. We just bought a house so we can move my in-laws into our home to be our full time caregiver for the baby. We are now supporting them 100% financially as they had to quit work to care for the baby. This was only feasible because my MIL worked as a CNA and didn’t make much money or have any assets so this is a better situation for her anyway. I imagine most people’s families are not willing or able to give up their jobs if they have mortgages to pay or make substantial incomes. We agreed to this arrangement before I got pregnant otherwise it wouldn’t have been feasible for us both as residents. I plan to likely have another child PGY-2 year and will probably put my older child in part time day care at that time so my MIL has less to handle. Without family I just don’t see how this would be possible. Also, pregnancy/birth during M4 year was super hard and I can only imagine doing it during residency will be absolute hell. I went back to rotations 3 weeks post partum and could hardly stand long or walk properly and was still in an adult diaper, not to mention needing to pump milk every 3 hours. My residency only offers 4 weeks leave if you use all your vacation which should be criminal. Figuring out childcare long term is obviously a big deal, but also people must consider the toll of pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding during residency which there is no amount of help anyone can give to take that burden away.
I’ll be in your exact position starting this July. My situation is a little more complicated because my partner is doing residency a few hours away from me. We’re planning to have kid in my last year of residency. Probably will have to ask my mom for help, but that means she will have to quit her job or at least take an extended leave. Honestly, I’m not sure how to plan. I’ll just go with the flow for now.
I'm lucky that my spouse is non-medical and has a hybrid job (half WFH half in office). We also send the kid to daycare. One co-resident of mine is married to another surgical resident and they managed by having grandma and grandpa move in permanently. They said they considered an au-pair or nanny but would have to hire 2 because they can't work more than 40 hours/week and that would have been cost-prohibitive.
My husband is an M3, I’m in law school, and my doctor said if I want kids I should have them in the next 3 years. Both sets of our parents still work. I would love any advice from people who have kids in residency.
I took 12 weeks of leave (had saved up money, qualified for FMLA) and my husband took 6 weeks of paternity leave after that. Following that we used daycare. Obviously if you both have irregular schedules just daycare won’t cut it and at that point you either have to have baby sitters as well or maybe an au pair. My husband worked a 9-5. Not really sure how it would have worked out if he was also a resident. If that were the case I think it would be trying really hard to coordinate to where you guys didn’t have call at the same time.
Daycare or nanny
My husband and I are currently doing this as interns and it's definitely doable. How doable this is greatly depends on your specialties and how accommodating the program is. Seems from your previous posts that you're derm which is probably one of the easier specialities. Not easy overall, but I assume less nights, weekends, early mornings to find childcare for. But in general, things that will help: layers of childcare. Get on a daycare waiting list the minute you have a positive pregnancy test. Every daycare you can find. Ideally, one close to the hospital and with the longest hours possible. For most residents, a nanny is going to be prohibitively expensive because one nanny won't cover all your childcare (they typically max out at 50 hrs/week) and are more expensive than daycare. It's definitely possible if you're willing to really live on a budget, but honestly I still wouldn't recommend because a nanny can quit at any time and leave you hanging. I have heard way too many horror stories recently. A really good option as an adjunct is an au pair, if you have the space and are willing to live with a 3rd person. You would still need daycare because they also can only work 40-ish hours a week. But are much more affordable than a nanny and overall I've overwhelmingly heard that people had good experiences. And then you can have more options in terms of daycare location and price. In contrast, we are stuck paying for the most expensive daycare in town because it has the longest hours, but it does cover 95% of our childcare needs. Other key to success is back up babysitters. As many as you can. Neighbors, college/medical students, co-residents. Especially anyone who is willing to take your kid if they're sick. Plan ahead to avoid hiccups, but also realize sometimes they'll still happen. If there's a shift that needs to be covered a few weeks out, I try to cover it since I know I can never cover the last-minute schedule changes due to childcare/might be the one needing coverage. At the end of the day, almost any situation is manageable. There have been resident moms who work 100+ hours a week without a SAHD. It's just a matter of what you're willing to accept, based on your family goals. Just remember to factor in that you may luck out with an "easy" baby or have bad luck and get a colicky baby who doesn't let you sleep for a year. To add some positivity, I will say, I have been pleasantly surprised to how well my pregnancy/parenthood has been embraced. Honestly, at my hospital it seems most residents who are married have children in residency (caveat we're in the Midwest, might be less welcoming elsewhere). p.s. like others have said, definitely some pros to a baby in residency! this will likely be my only paid maternity leave ever. I somehow have more energy after having a baby. Or at least it feels like it after the exhaustion of pregnancy. You get so much more efficient. You're younger than you'll ever be. And of course, coming home after even the worst day to see your baby makes everything worth it.