well, hello!

I didn’t mean for an entire week to go by between posts, but — well, here we are!  I survived my first week of call post-Genevieve.  Honestly, it was really rough.  The first three nights were brutal – I was essentially answering patient calls between G’s feedings, which left very little time left for SLEEP*.  It felt inhumane in the way that I recall certain parts of residency.  Thankfully, the rest of the week was somewhat better.  But I did have to see multiple patients in the hospital over the weekend**, which meant 8 straight days of pumping (including a 5 am session).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we’ve also been dealing with a typical family round of viral crap — as usual, Cameron and I had most of the symptoms while Josh and Annabel were essentially spared (what’s up with that!?).  G has her first real runny nose now and even had a bit of a temp over the weekend — poor baby!  But at least she’s past that super-newborn stage when fever = hospitalization.  Glad we made it through that period without incident!

Needless to say, I finished out the week entirely exhausted.  Spent.  But it’s over now, and I had yesterday off to recover, and I am feeling human again.

I often get people asking me how I “do it all”, and this was one of those times when I’d just like to officially announce that I DO NOT.   I was 100% in survival mode, which included:

✅ Extra help from our nanny (she stayed until 7 pm on my call nights)

✅ A whole lot of mind-numbing-phone use (and supportive texting from a friend).  My Moment graphs look terrible!

✅ Very little exercise (too tired and my URI was also a convenient excuse)

✅  Sleeping in whenever I could (after the 5 am pump) rather than keeping up with my usual AM routine.  The lack of organization time left me feeling uneasy (I NEED my weekly review process!) but sometimes you just have to compromise.

✅ Ignoring my email and most of my to do list (just caught up to some extent this AM)

✅ Saying no to adding anything ‘optional’ to the calendar or to my days.  Including evening meetings/events at work.  I know this runs counter to some of what I’ve talked about on the podcast, but . . . this is a season.  A season where G needs me to physically be around her as much as I feasibly can.

✅ Cranky parenting of A&C — not happy about this, but honestly I’d give myself a C-plusin patience with them the past week.  Last night was much better, though!

I’m mildly traumatized and not excited to do it all again in 20 days, which is the # I have until the next call week in this particular case.  So.  I guess I had better try to appreciate my freedom and hope for a lighter week, because I’m pretty sure G is not going to be sleeping much more anytime soon (cue the 4 month sleep regression . . . ).

* Tuesday through Thursday went something like: Bed @ 9:30p.  Get paged at 10:30p.  G wakes to nurse at 12a. Paged at 1:30a, up until 2:15a entering orders.  G wakes to nurse at 3:30a.  Pump at 5a.  Paged at 6a.  Go to work all day and repeat.  Turn into sleep-deprived maniac.

** And yes, this did help me maintain perspective because I saw some really sick kids and was reminded that while I may have some mild stressors right now, I’m still incredibly lucky that mine are healthy.