April 1, 2009

Kris has lovingly restored some bits and pieces of my blog that I obliterated during the server move. I have kind of scared the bejeebies out of myself with my technical ineptitude. I'm hesitant to get into the back panel anymore. Somebody stop me before I help again!

I'm 31 weeks preggos now and although I'm trying to mentally deny it, I'm starting to feel like I'm in my third trimester. The last few weekends I have gone camping and on a break to an indoor waterpark with the kids. My body wants to sloooow down a bit but I have a hard time doing so. I have had a few bouts of anxiety about being able to handle a newborn again, but markedly less anxiety than with my other pregnancies. I think that this is more due to life experience than anything.

I have gained approximately 24 pounds, which puts me on a 40 pound trajectory if I follow my last pregnancies of rapid weight gain at the end. So much for a Nicole Kidman post partum bod. I only mention this because the ObGyn in the group that I last met with told me to watch my weight gain at my last visit. It depressed me so much that I went home to bake brownies.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we are three months away from the end of training. It feels like all that we have ever known. At some level I know that some things will change, but this way of life is just so ingrained. More or less, I made a sort of peace with the status quo a couple of years ago. Sure, I'll never like some things about being a surgeon's wife, but I just sort of let some things go because the anger wasn't getting me anywhere.

We had our first conference call tonight with our financial planner. I honestly believed he was going to spank our bottoms and put us to bed for our financial irresponsibility during fellowship. We acrued CC debt of about $1100 a month over the course of the two year fellowship period. It feels so ...wrong and inauthentic. I really don't recommend this route. We had always planned to treat fellowship differently than residency, but when it came right down to it, accruing CC debt just to live felt icky. I don't regret SAH with DD because she's off to school four days a week next year, I just don't like the consequences of our choices.

Instead of chastizing us, this guy was like, you all have done a decent job compared to most physicians starting out. :thud: This guy only works with physicians so he sees the seedy underbelly of the financial hardship of training. I was hesitant to hire this guy, but he had some great ideas.

If anything, I realize now that instead of paying off a chunk of debt during residency, we would have been better off to save more and defer the debt so that we could have had a cushion for fellowship.

Beyond just the financial ramifications, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around a different, more balanced life. I have spent the vast majority of my marriage alone. Quasi-single parenting is the only parenting I have ever known. Last week Sean took a four day weekend and we had a ball. We took a road trip to Indy and stayed at one of those indoor waterparks and went to the Children's museum. On day three, we dropped the kids off in Dayton at the inlaws for a grown up day together. We actually went to dinner and a movie.

Honestly, the first three days were of him being around were fantastic. By the fourth day, I was like, "Don't you have somewhere you need to go?" I love him, but I needed some space. I'm used to being the benevolent dictator of my life and of our house and home. This whole negotiation thing is sort of a PITA.

Because we are at such a crossroads, I'm contemplating creating a list of things that nine years of residency has taught us. The truth of the matter is that sometimes there are no tricks or easy answers. Some years you just have to keep your head down low and push through. It sucks, but sometimes survival is the very best that you can do. You just have to tough out some of those hard years. I'm not trying to understate the pain of training, I'm just spelling out the only viable alternative that you really have. Feel free to complain away to me if you're in the trenches. There is no dark thought that I haven't had myself.

I'm feeling prone to bursts of nostalgia, however, so I'll probably come up with some sort of nonsense.

It is interesting to see the very beginning of how training has affected the kids. DS is sort of the poster child for residency. All nine years of his life, his dad was a surgery resident who basically was perpetually absent. This made me vigilant about making sure to minimize the effects on him whenever I could. Ironically, he is the child that got my undivided attention because he was our only child for five years. We lived far from family, so he had his own frequent flyer account. I worked, so he went to daycare and afterschool care, sometimes when he was sick or wanted his mommy. He always knew that he would move far away from his current home at least once.

Now that he is nine, he is Mr. Roll-with-the-punches. I see other kids who won't spend the night away from their parent or integrate into a new social setting. Not him. I also see that he got the best years of the grandparents. They were younger, in better health, and grandchildren were more of a novelty. On my husband's side of the family, this baby I'm expecting now will be number 7. Needless to say, DS2's experience will be different.

DD will be under five when her father finishes training. She won't remember his perpetual absence or some of the crazy sh*& we did to get through. She won't remember us handpacking our Uhaul and driving everything we own five states away. She won't remember daycare or beater cars or the palpable stress of a match, living paycheck to paycheck, or 100 hour work weeks.

This new baby gets older, wiser parents who just can't get worked up about the little things anymore. I'm always amazed at some of the piddly things that some of my nonmedical friends get fired up about. This lifestyle has demanded flexibility and resilience. I'm not exactly Ms. Que-Sera-Sera, but my life experiences have pounded this lesson into me.

In short, I can feel us at this crossroads in our life where I know change is coming but I can't quite get a handle on it. I joke that I have a bit of Stockholm Syndrome with residency...I'm almost fighting the inevitable breakup at some level. Change has never been my strong suit. Apparently, one of the lessons that my life is hell bent on teaching me how to be flexible.

More musings to come....