Regret and Guilt ?

[pstone]

I would love to hear about any of you that have your spouses regreting the decision to become physicians, especially because they are not getting to spend time with the children.

Also, any of you feel guilty for being home? For not working as hard? (at least in traditional ways)?

Just my thoughts of the moment.

Sorry it has taken a few days to reply. We have been in the middle of back to school shopping and getting all ramped up since our oldest is off to Kindergarten on Thursday....Ok, he is the only one truly excited about it. Where did the last five years go?!?

Back to the topic at hand, the regret issue is something that still comes around. Mostly, when office politics cause situations that are truly a pain in the a**, other times are when Sallie Mae leaves us a pretty letter in the mailbox with six figures owed. Then DW usually says she should have been an attorney because she would have been done years ago and could have been making good money for the amount of hours that she was working....although, that opens another scenario about being away from the kids- and there are a few at-law-spouses here that know it could be easily as hard as medicine, FROM A TIME AWAY FROM FAMILY stand point, if you want to move up into "partner" at the prestigous law firm. But, those are of course just dreams of what 'she should have done'.

As far as DW feeling regret that she isn't/hasn't been around for some of the small things...I am sure that she was dissapointed about some, but it has been a load off her mind to have me here to relay what milestone was just reached or whatever. Truth be known, she just doesn't have the patience to deal with the daily tantrums/issues of two kids without blowing a gasket....not to say that I haven't doled out timeouts for all so I could have a minute to myself to recompose a very scattered brain, but she is/can be short tempered. In the big picture of things, she doesn't regret a thing about what she has gone through, it has made her who she is today. That is a VERY good pediatrician with a good patient base that is appreciative of her as well...I have seen this first hand, and it makes me so proud of her.

Do I feel guilty about being home? Well, that depends on the day, but for the most part, no. When we were discussing kids and family back in our days as a couple, we both decided that we didn't want to have kids that would need to be in daycare and raised by someone else while we were out trying to keep our head above water in residency and whatever I am professionally. Since I am the one without a six figure debt load over my head, and in need of finishing some schooling before I would be able to "make it" in the job force. The choice was easy. That being said, it wasn't an easy thing to do at all. It was hard to leave the adult interaction that I had with my job, even though I hated the work, it was a good place for social situations. But she couldn't just decide that she wanted to stay at home with the boys, so it was my new job! I have been doing for over five years now and I haven't gone completely insane...yet!

There are days when I want to hide in a hole.....and then there are days when I pull a Kris,(another post somewhere recently) and I corner anyone over the age of 18 and then talk about anything until they run away, never to venture by our house again.
We are currently military, so that has been interesting for DW and on where we live, due to the HUGE amount of retired and active military folks everywhere. Our youngest child has all kinds of health issues and that has been challenging. The amount of guilt that I usually feel has to be put in check by the fact that this is just damn hard, period. It has been the most rewarding five and a half years of "work" that I have ever done, I will eventually get back into the work force but I couldn't have imagined the way that this would touch me to see our kids growing up in ways that MOST fathers never do.

[fluffhead]

I'm drowning in schoolwork, so haven't had a chance to check in in awhile - teaching a full year course in 6 weeks!!!
Anway, the wife frequently feels guilty about working so hard, frequently regrets her decision. I don't think this was unforeseen.
I don't feel guilty about staying home, though I frequently question my sanity and decision processes. But at the end of the day, I would be incapable of handing my kids over to somebody else for almost all of their waking hours.
That said, these residency years are the worst time of my life, to be sure.