"I wanted to maintain my running and then work was catching up and I think that's when it got kind of crazy in terms of you know I'm trying to do too much. And when you have too many balls in the air waiting until they hit the ground and a lot of problems with mariage, a lot of problems with kids, and a lot of problems at work. That was when I was …

"My brain was not in OB mode. Like anybody who is an obgyn, when you get admitted that sick at 26 weeks, knows you're really not going to go until 34 weeks but my brain wasn't processing that. So I reached out to both my program director and the chairman of our department in like panicked text messages. I didn't have it in me to call them. I had 1%…

"I promise we will all do better if you lift up and empower other women, because guess what when the time comes and you need a favor they will then return it to you. We need to stop this you or me mentality and competition. I think women are pitted against each other more than men are and I'm like there is enough to go around, I promise." This epis…

"I feel like I was able to spend those years of fellowship really asking this question of how do I want this career to fit into my life. Before I never really understood what it was going to feel like to be a mom or to be a wife or what it was going to feel like to just want to be Rene and who I am and the rest of the things. For so long, understan…

"We both knew that one of us would need to be able to still be a default parent and I actually wanted that role, which I'm sure we'll talk about it's also very hard to be a default parent and a doctor, but that was sort of the thing I didn't want to give up when I went into medicine." This episode is with Dr. Molly Brett, a primary care physician i…

This episode is with Dr. Kimberly Buss, a family medicine physician in California. We discuss: - Having a miscarriage in her second trimester - Having a young child at home while in her residency training - One of her children having health issues and how that affected her as a mom and a physician - Her work as a primary care physician, particularl…

This episode is with Dr. Grace Farris, a hospitalist in Texas and published author. We discuss: - The inspiration between her comics, and specifically "weekend mom" - The decision to move her family from Boston, to NYC, and then to Texas - Working as a hospitalist in NYC during the COVID pandemic with two young boys - Working full time - Coaching y…

"I felt totally stripped of everything that I had ever thought of myself because I was not going to work, so I was really kind of just tied to my house for 6 weeks. I was bored! I wanted to be working, I wanted to be doing easy cases. The baby slept so much. I'm like what do I do? And then she never really latched and so I was exclusively pumping s…

"It sounds easy but it's really hard when you've worked this hard to be a physician to say 'oh I'm gonna do a little less'. What I've realized is that myself and I think maybe some listeners out there might resonate with, we often feel like our productivity and our value to society is based on how many procedures we do, patients we see, hours we pu…

"The big bottom line, ok, this is the big bottom line - young moms and women in general we are so self critical and we are so down on ourselves, and I could practically cry just thinking about this because it's so unneeeded. We're as smart as the guys, we're as committed as they are, we probably work harder in certain ways. Women do a lot of unpaid…

"I know how hard it is. I know that parenting is hard. I know that life is hard, but I do believe that we have to look for the glimmers and look for the hope and look for the joy and celebrate those things, at the same time not denying the negative but understanding that those negatives will always exist in our world." This episode is with Dr. Mona…

"Having any sort of mental or physical health problem doing this job makes it almost impossible...it makes you realize you don't know what other people are going through and I think it reminds us to give everyone some grace." This episode is with Dr. Alli Letica, a general surgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. We discuss: - Being furl…

"I came to this point where I am like 6 months post partum at this point. So I've gone back to work, you know was in the swing of things, was working at that point 3 sometimes 4 days per week and I just was not happy in either situation. I wasn't fully happy at home and I wasn't fully happy at work and I told my employer 'I love you guys and I love…

This episode is with Dr. Polly van den Berg, an Infectious Disease physician in Philadelphia. We talk about: - Timing of having a child in the context of her husband's brain cancer diagnosis - Post-partum anxiety - and so much more! Connect with Moms of Medicine: - Instagram @moms_of_medicine - Momsofmedicine@gmail.com…

This episode is with Dr. Laura Vater, a GI oncologist in Indiana who focuses her non-clinical time on humanism, writing and well-being We talk about: - Writing her first novel and working on getting it published - Having her daughter in medical school - Breastfeeding her daughter for 2.5 years while being an internal medicine resident - The inspira…

"I was super present with my kids when I was home. I didn't pull out phones, there weren't cell phones way back then that were so distracting. I would try not to be on the computer and making phone calls and things like that. I remember it that way of just being as present as possible. My kids still remember I was getting up at 6 in the morning and…

"After week 17 I think, I was worried about him. I knew that with my fibroids I would have pain. I was like it will be worse than what I had with my periods, but, well I can handle pain. I didn't factor in the emotional aspect of that. Like worrying about losing someone. So that to me was the hardest part." This episode is with Dr. Mwanasha Merril,…

"Just before I turned 34 weeks I was doing my fellows clinic from my hospital room. I had a sign on the door like 'Do Not Disturb, I'm in clinic', and they were like we have to get your vitals at some point during this. So they came and took my blood pressure and it was like 170/100. The resident was pushing IV labetalol while I was precepting with…

"Within the span of an hour and a half our lives had gone from I'll be back in 90 minutes to go in and do my surgeries and move on, to we're having a girl let's celebrate, and then we're holding hands just with our hearts in our throat" This episode is with Dr. Liliana Camison, a plastic surgeon and craniofacial surgery fellow at NYU We talk about:…

"Studying burnout has showed us that having control over your job, over your work life, is such an important component of being satisified, of not being burned out, that it makes me sad for women like you and women now giving birth and trying to find balance, in particular in primary care. I think there are just more and more barriers to it unfortu…

"I think I put that pressure on myself kind of to begin with that I just wanted to prove to everyone that I could be a pregnant resident and still function like a normal non-pregnant resident... I was taking primary call every third day up until 36 weeks so that was definitely challening as time went on. Like doing reductions with a big pregnant be…

"I had a lot of ambivalence around being a mother and I think looking back on why it was all justified, and part of it is that particularly as working women we are expecetd to work as though we don't have children and parent as though we don't have jobs, and I just felt like I don't know if i want to do this. I dont know if i can be the type of mom…

"I remember so distinctly we were in Rwanda, I came back from a run, and my husband was like sitting on the chair looking shell shocked, and he said 'uhh you need to read this email'. And it was an email that said 159 children have been released from The Congo and yours is one of them. Please come get him" This episode's conversation is with Dr. Be…

"Our lives are different than men in medicine in so many ways, and it has to do with being female and all of the reproductive burden that is put on us because of that." We talk about: - Having a baby as the only female physician in a private practice - Feeling ostracized - The challenges of treating pregnant women while pregnant - Her husband choos…

"I just felt like, in that moment, I can't move forward in being a physician. Because you know to be honest I was fixated on her mortality, and I really thought I can't exist in my old life, you know, after this." On this week's episode I talk with Dr. Kashi Goyal, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at Ohio State University, about her experience …

"What do you want to do with your life, you know? I mean what are you really happy doing and is it worth doing something that you don't love every single morning." On this week's episode I talk with Dr. Angie Frank about how she decided she didn't want to do research anymore and what it looked like to make that change, discovering that it is possib…

This week I'm joined by Dr. Ritika Parris who is a primary care physician and head of GME wellness at BIDMC in Boston. We cover so much in this coversation from having her two babies prematurely, navigating roles and jobs with her partner who is also a physician, the mentors she had looking out for her along the way, and what she had to do when she…

"It has been just the absolute joy and privilege of my life to see how institutions can change and how we can change the institutions that we love...that we are not just here to put the stethoscope on the chest of a patient. We are here to change the future of medicine" In this conversation with Dr. Daniele Olveczky we talk: - C-sections and compli…

"The big bottom line, ok, this is the big bottom line - young moms and women in general we are so self critcal and we are so down on ourselves, and I could practically cry just thinking about this because it's so unneeeded. We're as smart as the guys, we're as committed as they are, we probably work harder in certain ways. Women do a lot of unpaid …

"You end up finding yourself in this bubble of work, and childcare and survival mode, and I think a lot of us tend to feel alone when our focus is so narrow and our focus is on the work and on our child and it can feel very isolating, and it can feel like we're the only one going through the situation, not recognizing that it is so common and all n…

"We have this whole other life outside of the hospital where we may or may not identify as being a physician, and either way I think that's ok. Some people feel like medicine is their calling and they're a doctor at home and a doctor at work. And there are other people who are like I love being a physician and I'm a physician at work but I'm a mom …

"I spent too long thinking that because the system was a certain way, that that was the right way for it to be, and I think it took me a really long time to have the perspective to look and see how diseased our entire system really is, and to think of it in terms of how if we were to design a system by which to train physicians today…for training a…

"Culture change is really hard, but changing the culture in medicine and other industries to make it sort of normalized for the non-birth partner to take just as much time to sort of set the stage for a 50/50 partnership when it comes to the logistics of raising a child, which are substantial" In our first episode I got to sit down and talk with my…