26. Long distance parenting, maternity leave challenges, and being a hardcore surgeon and amazing mom with Dr. Nichole Shaw

Moms of Medicine

"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 straight away. I could have tried breastfeeding for longer but I knew I only had 5 weeks of maternity leave and I wasn't going to fight her every feeding for 4 of those 5 weeks, I was just not about it. So, I think I lost a lot of that bonding with her because I just felt like a milk maid. I couldn't figure out how to pump and hold her and feed all at once. It was just a lot. Alex was doing a lot of the feedings while I was just pumping all the time."
This episode is with Dr. Nichole Shaw, an orthopedic surgeon who is completing her hand fellowship at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We discuss:
- The challenges and benefits of having a partner in medicine:
---- Choosing whose career they will prioritize when
---- Navigating the military match (for her husband) with the traditional match
---- Choosing a subspecialty that she loves and that also allows her to be present with her family
---- Their motto as a couple being "M.D. - make due"
- Thinking for a long time that she wanted to be single and not have kids and be solely focused on her career and how that changed for her
- Struggling on maternity leave and being excited to go back to work
- The decision to keep her last name
- Her daughter being diagnosed with failure to thrive and all that ensued after that
- Doing long distance with her husband throughout multiple stages of their relationship
- Her current long distance setup (Nichole in fellowship in Pittsburgh and her husband in Chicago with their daughter) and how they had to make the tough decision of where their daughter would be for this year
- And so much more!
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