Working motherhood...

Mom and stepdad were over tonight, a rare occurrence since they live several hours from us. They gave up a day of their spring break to come sit with Cap'n while I worked and Angel went to go tour this university that he's going to be doing his Ph.D work at in the fall. Mind, he'll be gone all night and part of tomorrow, which makes me a single working parent of 2 for the second 2-day stretch in the last week. That's right; I'm trying to juggle Cap'n and Cups and my job and feed us all and still have a house left when Angel gets home tomorrow. So far we are all fed and the kids are bathed and I have not heard a peep in the last 5 minutes from the Eye in the Sky in Cups's room so maybe the repeated instructions about how she is not going to get any toys or books back if she continues to jump on the bed are having an effect. I know she was very angry about no stuffed animal to sleep with.

Dinner was lasagna that we made and froze in the pre-baby blitz of preparation, along with some asparagus that l saved my mother from steaming and ruined a cookie sheet broiling instead, along with peas for Cap'n, whom we are trying to start on foods now that he is 5 months old and interested in it. As I was Ninja-ing the peas from a previous night's supper (peas, a little water, blend until no longer round) I started thinking about what I am doing with the baby and how I'm not sure what demographic I fit into any more.

I plan on breastfeeding this baby as long as possible, but I am acutely aware of the crushing emotional stress that made me give up with Cups at 6 months. We have planned better this time. I don't buy baby food; we make our own. We use cloth diapers most of the time but keep disposables for short trips or where others are caring for the baby. He'll have his first excursion to daycare tomorrow since I have nowhere else to send him but mostly he stays at home. With his dad.

But the kind of blogs that cater to people who make their own baby food and read food labels and wash cloth diapers and breastfeed their babies are mostly written by stay-at-home moms. And most of them seem furthermore to be written by moms who are ecstatically content to spend their time staying at home. They are, occasionally, smug in their ecstasy even. And I find it hard to take.

I like working. I love being a doctor. I love running out in the middle of the night to deliver a baby and I we gelting shy smiles from kids in the clinic and I love what I do. It is exciting and fulfilling and hopeful and tragic and it is part of who I am, this being a doctor. But that means that Cups goes to daycare and Cap'n will too; that some days I get up at the crack of dawn and come home after dark. It means that I have made sacrifices, and so have my family. And I am not a stay-at-home mom and I don't intend to become one - so where are the websites for me? Where are the tips on how to chart over a nursing baby; how to organize so when I come home on my afternoon off with two kids, one Tae Kwan Do class ending at 4:30 and Angel not home until 5:30 before leaving for his class at 7, I can cook dinner and play with Cups and feed Cap'n in 90 minutes, including time to shop for whatever I didn't know we didn't have?

Where is the blog that tells me that a Bamboo pen tablet wasn't a frivolous waste of money but a way to write this blog entry one-handed instead of the laborious hunt-and-peck one-handed typing I had been doing?  Why is it always that I can work or I can be a real mommy? Who made that rule? Who says that I can't know my beautiful, creative, eclectic daughter and work a full day in the office?

She knows her mommy is a doctor and she's okay with that. She knows where the snacks are on the OB floor and she carries charts to the nurses' station and she is a part of my life every single day. And I hope Cap'n, who has finally fallen asleep, will be the same way. This is who I am. I want my children to know that mommies can work and daddies can do laundry and that both of us carry them with us, even when they're not right there with us. I want them to be free.

Ice cream.

I've told this story before.
This was in medical school, sometime in the clinical years, on my trauma surg rotation. I had a quiet rotation, as these things go; considering I was at $ major_trauma_center and had no interest in doing surgery, even, at the time. lt was overall enjoyable. But it was also my first brush with death.
So there I was, on an ordinary call day, walking into the ED for a neck wound. I remember the patient - I don't think I'll ever forget her - older, frightened. Very frightened. I talked to her, as we were wheeling her down to the OR for exploratory surgery, held her hand, told her about myself. She listened. I think the politeness helped her pretend she wasn't so afraid.
They went to lay her down on the table as she was preparing for surgery, and she fought them - suddenly, as if she were fighting for her life. The gentle frightened woman turned strong with fear, and then she said "I can't breathe. I'm going to die."
And she did. There was no amount of swearing or chest compressions or needles or effort that could get her intubated and breathing; she slipped away despite it all. And I looked at her and up at the trauma surgery team of tough guys and surgeons who dropped the F-bomb like my mother taught me please and thank you. And all I could think was "I can't cry now."
Chief resident looked at me; big and bad as the rest, but I know it hit him hard too. Said "Come on-we need to do burn unit-rounds." I jumped at the pretense of normality. We went up to the burn unit and we saw one or two folks and then he cut through the kitchenette.
"Here." he opened the freezer and took out an ice cream bar. "Go eat this somewhere where the nurses won't see."  I ate my ice cream and I had my cry and we never said anything about it after that. We didn't have to.
Sometimes I miss knowing someone else is taking final responsibility for what I write; knowing I have someone looking over my shoulder and making sure it's that much harder to make a big mistake. But mostly, these days, I just wish I had someone to hand me an ice cream bar and tell me to go eat it somewhere that the nurses can't see. It makes everything just that much smoother.