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• Spend daytime continuing the ultimately futile exercise of trying to contain the disaster area. Bonus points for not putting the baby’s food directly on the floor, because we all know it’s going to end up there anyway.
• Attempt to keep up with social obligations (visiting classmate to bring her food as she just had a baby, her milk came in while I was there, I am the lactation fairy of goodwill, bearing cornish hens, leek/onion latkes, and oat muffins. Also I took the gremlin to a birthday party for one of his little friends.) 
• Various small errands- cleaning the cat box, taking out the trash, coordinating diaper drop offs, cooking dinner, preparing tomorrow’s lunch. putting the baby to bed at 6.
• studying furiously in the very few hours I have to myself.
• taking, and passing the neonatal resuscitation online portion of the test. 
• Having an emotional breakdown where in I cry and have a 30 second tirade ending with “and everyone has more fun than me” which rather takes the maturity away from the stress. 
• Continue studying and getting ready for tomorrows classes because there’s no rest for the wicked and the righteous don’t need any. 
• Exhaustion. Utter exhaustion. Every. Single. Day.

last night I got two hours of sleep, and then was up for an hour, and then another two hours of sleep, and then my gremlin decided it was time to be up for the day and shenanigans ensued and somehow he found some banana and shoved it in my toes while I was dozing on the couch. 
Suffice it to say, I was less than enthusiastic about going to school today. 

When kiddo went down for his first nap around 6:45 am (it’s never a good day when first nap is before 8), I crashed back out. Then my husband got home from work and said things like “Honey, are you ok?” and “You have to leave for school in half an hour, are you going to put clothes on?” while I groaned and flopped around the house. 

So, my husband got real cuddly, and wrapped an arm around me…and looked up the einstein vs stephen hawking epic rap battle of history and played it right in my ear. Then he played me some thrift shop. Then he convinced me it was epic hat friday. And slowly but surely, my spirits have risen. 

When I got to school, there was free coffee, free scones, and free bacon. 
Also free samples of cal:mag. 

So HAPPY FRIDAY, EVERYBODY!
What do you do to psych up to school?

Commonly affecting children age 1-4, it typically causes Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease.  In infants, the course of disease typically begins with the refusal of food due to a sore throat. Then they get a mild fever, and then on day 3-5 a skin rash shows up on the hands, feet, and mouth. In the mouth the rash is typically blisters, but on the hands and feet the rash can just be erythematous, small circles. Or it can be blisters there, too.  Super contagious, droplets, fecal matter, all that stuff. 

My kid has it. He’s doing fine.

He gave it to me. I’m dying. I thought I had strep throat at first, as I had 3 of 4 centor’s criteria and my fever hit 103.4 a couple times. Today the rest of the rash showed up on my hands and feet. I only have blisters all over my mouth and throat, the rest of the rash is macular. Some of the blisters in my throat are approaching a centimeter in diameter. Kiddos rash is all vesicular.

Moral of the story:
Childhood illnesses are always best kept in childhood

Also:
Children are slimy little adorable plague bearers.

-4am wake up
-7:30 class
-9 am traffic
-9:30 am obtained cold days
-10 am ceiling in bathroom turns into a waterfall. This proceeds into no-nap thirty because of maintenance and general scrambling.
- 10:45 am cat vomit everywhere. Just everywhere.
-11 am baby tries to eat secret cat vomit treasure trove.
-11:30 am baby tradeoff so I can go back to school.
-12:15 pm finally get in to class. Forgot my stethoscope and all other important equipment.
_1:43 pm a patient who I’ve seen 4 times in the last 3 months asks me if I’m pregnant
-3pm finally done + traffic
-3:30 pm find out other bathroom flooded too.
-4:16 pm baby finally takes a nap. I’m running around the hous trying to mop and do laundry.

I think I’m going to have a drink after bedtime today.

• your kid is more than likely going to get sick more often for a while after they hit 6 months old. Why? Because back in the good ol’ pregnancy days, babe got some antibodies from mom- a specific type called IgG that crosses the placenta. Those immunoglobulins just degraded- they don’t last forever. Now baby needs to make their own responses.
• If you’re holding your kiddo facing you, with your forearms on their back and supporting their neck with your hands, drop them backwards (not let-go drop them, just tilt them back) and they’ll open their mouth for a second or two. Peek in at those gums! Also, tongue depressors are cheap. I give Roland one to chew on and use another to take a quick peek at the rest of his gums while he’s distracted.
• Teething pain radiates to the ears. If they’re pulling at an ear, it might just be teeth, especially if they’re tired. (that said, I love my otoscope. Bust that thing out ALL the time to double check the age old teeth or ears question.)

Disclaimer: this blog is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as, nor should it be considered a substitute for, professional medical advice. Do not use the information on this website for diagnosing or treating any medical or health condition. If you/your kid have or suspect you/your kid have a medical problem, call yo’ doc!

This is a great piece from the Atlantic magazine that I’d like to take a moment and encourage everyone to read. I’m deliberately choosing to write this on my medical school blog rather than my parenting blog for two reasons:

1) As the article suggests, many women actively deny motherhood as a measure of getting ahead in the workplace. Motherhood is frequently seen as a setback in terms of career, and it should not be so. People expect men in power to have a family, but rarely question why women in successful careers often do not have a family.  Motherhood has added a new dimension to my life which frankly leaves me more fulfilled at the end of the day, even though my responsibilities have increased while my sleep has decreased. The balance that spending time with my child lends to my life is incredible. We constantly hear that “It’s the little things that matter” as we disregard them, but having a child is viewing the world with eyes meant for seeing even the smallest things as potentially interesting, a first experience, and bringers of joy. I am a more complete medical student now than I was march 13th.

2) I would not be able to continue my career if I and my husband were not both at institutions that value family highly. While I wasn’t able to take any time off from school and started taking finals only 6 days after my son was born, my school has accommodated me with two comfortable and private nursing rooms, high quality sound and the ability to listen to lectures in a separate room where I can also devote attention to my child. My school has a separate track which adds a year of training on to the education process mainly to allow parents to have more time at home. My school is investing in a daycare coop on our campus where we’ll be able to visit our little ones on class breaks. I can count on one hand the number of days that I haven’t seen a child in the halls, and I can think of one class where a 10 year old sat in on every single lecture. More importantly, I know how rare this is. Most schools will not allow for life balance.
My husband had a month of paid leave after our son was born, which allowed me to take finals and still have a roof over our heads. How incredibly lucky- but should it be luck? Why on earth does our country punish  people who have jobs who also want to have children?

Sobering thoughts. We need to be the change in United States policy. Live a balanced life- and demand that a balanced life be livable!

Parents wondering where I keep the baby spam? It’s next door at babydescant.tumblr.com

Which I would hyperlink you to, but the phone is limited. And the bouncer isn’t going anywhere until little bit goes to deep sleep.

Medicine followers: I’m torn between sharing my recent research into northwestern native american healing rituals and fun facts -or- making long “how it’s made”-esque posts to help me study for step 1, which is in 8 weeks. Lawd help me. What would you rather read?

I haven’t been able to post much, and I don’t forsee this getting much better.

Despite the fact that I’m taking a very light load this quarter, I find myself falling behind. I haven’t heard the entirety of a lecture more than once this quarter, and the one time that I got to hear an entire lecture, I missed the class before it.

My days are passing in a blur of wakeful drowsiness, consumed with the well being of my little man and perpetually trying to catch up for the next test. I imagine this will continue for the rest of my life, though I hope that this will get easier. I hear it gets easier. That someday I’ll sleep for more than two and a half hours at a time, that I’ll be able to study without one hand on the bouncer, that eventually I’ll have passed all my boards and will never again have to worry about step one after August 7th. That I won’t spend my whole week pumping and hoarding milk for the day of my lab classes, that even eventually other people will be able to make food for this child so that I  could, if necessary, go somewhere else for a day or two to study. 

Unlike the Starks, my words are “Summer is coming”, a sentiment that nearly all students share.

So excuse me for a while. I have to freak out because I have a headache and am studying sheehan’s syndrome. I need to develop some hemoccult cards, run some more rapid strep tests, and give vitamin B injections. I need to study endocrinology and take my kid to his pediatrician, keep the laundry going and write up my cranial nerve testing. I need to practice my screening physicals and take long walks with my baby in our new stroller. I need to curl up next to my husband  and just let the world wait for a moment or two.

Love and health~

lcfelisa:

Eagle Creek, Oregon.

Summer is coming. Usually we go camping somewhere like this (though we don’t put our tent so close to the water!) Does anyone have experience camping with 3 month olds? Is it even feasible, or should we just hold off for a few years?

(I should probably just study for boards this summer anyways.)