Back to work

So I’m a working mom...and I feel very conflicted about it. I hear that’s normal. I really do love my job. I love that I get to help people and be with them during an important and difficult time in their lives. I love that I know all the ins and outs of the system where I work and how I can make maneuvering through that system easier for families. I love the people that I work with. I love most of all that I feel confident and effective in what I’m doing every day. Somehow that feeling is where things seem the be waning the most as a working mom. I feel less confident and less effective. I think it’s the pumping.
I’ve been back at work for one week. I HATE PUMPING!!! I hate that I have to sit at my desk, or in a room somewhere for 30 minutes without being able to get up. I hate that I have to wash the stupid pumping apparatus every time I pump. I have to do this whole thing 3 times during each work day! I spend an hour and a half every day pumping!! At least I’ve figured out how to do it hands-free, so now I can type or chart review while I pump. That makes me at least a little more effective at my job. Still, it is hindering my performance. For example, today I planned to see a patient scheduled at 9am so I could pump at 10. By 10, the patient hadn’t showed up, so I started pumping. No kidding, I had barely started when I got a call from one of the other genetic counselors saying the patient was there. Nothing I could do at that point. I had to pump or I wouldn’t have gotten to it until after seeing the patient, which would probably take an hour. I couldn’t really make the patient wait 30 minutes while I finished pumping, so my colleague graciously stepped in to see the patient...so I could pump!!!
I also feel less effective because I don’t have as much work to do yet. The way things work in our department, you see a patient, and then you are responsible for the follow up care. Each patient requires an average of 30 minutes of follow up care. I am seeing patients, but it takes weeks to get results back sometimes, so I am still waiting to do the follow up piece. It means I don’t have much to do at this point, so I feel pretty useless a lot of the time. I know this will pass, but for now, it feels like such a waste to be at work pumping and not having much to do while my mother-in-law watches my baby.
All of this to say it’s not as much fun to be back at work as I thought it would be, which only makes me want to be with my baby more.
There is something surprising about being a working mom though. It’s changed how I experience my patients. I feel like I understand more about the relationship these moms have with their children. Like I can better imagine what it would be like, how devastating and truly worrying it might be to be sitting across from me. I think it makes me a better genetic counselor. I do keep reminding myself though, that I thought I was pretty empathetic and understanding before I had a baby. I may understand better now, but no one can truly understand what another person is going through. Because I’m so surprised by how much more I feel like I understand now that I’m a mom too, I am even more wary to assume that I understand much of what mom’s in my clinic are going through. Becoming a mom changed my perspective so much, it would be ridiculous for me to think that it wouldn’t change just as much or more if I actually was experiencing what my patients are experiencing. I guess that realization makes me a better genetic counselor too though. 

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