Mom Guilt

My toddlers cries are piercing their way through my closed bedroom door. She’s with a babysitter at the moment, and a very good one by my first impression. Cue severe Mom-Guilt. “You should be tending to her,” it says. BG’s cry tells me that she’s and in need of some snacks and a nap. 

We have a sitter come over on Saturdays so that my husband and I can get some housework and chores done. “Admin” work, as it were. Mom Guilt starts with hiring a sitter on a day when I don’t have to work in the first place. Saturday is a day for me to do online shopping, get my Mother’s Day cards out, update my schedule for the next two weeks, make sure my doctor’s appointments are on the calendar, meal plan, nap in peace, and if I’m lucky, write or paint. 

Such requires someone to watch my daughter, who needs attention at all hours when she’s not sleeping. We’re lucky in that our jobs offer a backup care benefit, which will assign a random sitter to come on these days. Some are better than others, but today, we lucked out with a superstar. 

Still, few things give me greater anxiety than meeting a new sitter. Just imagine a young, person, usually without children of their own, coming into your home. On entry they glance around the crowded kitchen and living room, with blankets askew and tufts of cat hair rolling around like tumbleweeds on the neglected floor. None of them outwardly judge, but I can only imagine what’s running through their mind: 

You let her eat foods that contain processed sugar on occasion?

You let her watch movies??

You let the cat on the countertop??

Your child isn’t saying words yet??

…etc etc. During the day I do my best to hide in my room and look productive. With a bad sitter if BG sees me it’s Game Over: A meltdown ensues and it takes the sitter 20 minutes and a Disney movie to get her calm again. 

…

Tomorrow is Mothers Day and recently as a mother and resident doctor I’ve been thinking about how much the decision to become a mother has impacted my career. Before kids, you think that everything is possible, that being a mom should in no way hinder your career ambitions if you’ve got the support you need. And I DO have much of the support I need: a husband who does more than his fair share of housework, a mother of my own who comes out once a month to help with childcare, sparce but available funds to hire a babysitter when we need extra help. 

As a working mom, most of my time and energy is spent in the sole pursuit of survival. 

My career ambitions before residency involved an application to Mohs surgery, one of the most competitive fellowships in medicine. Something like 50% of applicants match. A promising candidate will have on their CV attendance and presentations at several national conferences, a solid background in research, and glowing letters of recommendation from other famous surgeons with whom they’ve done an away rotation with. 

A national conference that I could potentially attend if I had something to present is the ASDS meeting, in Colorado this year. Going would require 1) something to publish and present, which I’m working on but no promises I’ll have an abstract by the deadline 2) Someone to cover for me as I’m on inpatient medicine, and even then I could likely only get coverage for a day or two 3) My mother to come and help watch our toddler and three-month-old children while I”m away. Possible? Yes. Realistic? Debatable. And at what cost to my family? 

At. What. Cost. Somehow it clicks. Yes, I could do these things, but the price that I and my family would have to pay is not insignificant: Missed memories. A strained marriage. And in the end, still no promise that i would match to my dream career. Sometimes I get jealous that, in a different world, I could just go. Just like my husband goes on a week-long business trip. Yes it sucks, but we make it work. Am I becoming a mommy statistic to “give up” before I’ve started? A part of me still wants to try.