doctors Archives – Corporettemoms.com

A Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Dr. Mom, in Florida

For the fourth installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Christa, who is a 30-year-old doctor in Florida with a young daughter. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics about this Working Mom…

Name: Christa
Lives: In a university town in Florida
Job: Doctor at an academic medical center
Age: 30
Home Situation: I live in a 1600-square-foot, single-family home with my husband, who works a full-time information technology job at the same university where I’m employed, and my daughter, who is around 2 1/2 years old.
Childcare Situation: During the week, we use a local corporate daycare chain that has extended hours (around $1,000/month). Usually drop-off is around 7:30-8:00 a.m. and pick-up is around 5:30-6:00 p.m. My parents live around two hours away and my mother provides emergency childcare.

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OB-GYN v. Midwife

Here’s a fun question for you, ladies: how did you decide between having an OB-GYN or midwife? Who did you want to deliver your baby; who did you ultimately choose? We’ve talked about birth experiences before (here’s my long story — with tips based on what I learned — from the birth of my first son), but not this. OB-GYN? Midwife? OB-GYN with Doula? How heavily did the place of the birth influence your decision (did anyone want a home birth?)?

For my $.02, for my first son, I didn’t strongly consider it either way — I already had a gynecologist I liked, so when we got pregnant I was happy she was an OB as well. I had no reason to distrust my OB-GYN or a hospital experience, and I didn’t even strongly consider a doula.

A lot of those statements fell away for my second birth — I felt totally betrayed by my OB-GYN’s total absence during my three days in the hospital (across the street from her office, for what that’s worth), and I hated the hospital after my lousy experience there. So for my second child I absolutely would have considered a midwife — but by that time I was 36 (37 for the birth), putting me in “geriatric pregnancy” territory, and I worried I might have a problem with blood clots based on some genetic testing we had done — so I wanted to be at the hospital in case anything went wrong. I found a new doctor’s office and a new hospital, and soldiered on; I consider myself lucky that I had a much better experience the second time. Still, my second OB-GYN employed several midwives, several of whom I met during the course of the many (many) prenatal appointments I went to — everyone I met seemed knowledgeable, trustworthy, experienced, and ultimately I would have been happy to have them in my corner when it came time to deliver the baby.

(As for the doula, I wanted both my mother and my husband in the room with me too much to ever really consider a doula — if I hadn’t had such a strong desire I think a doula would have been awesome.)

Ladies, how did you choose between an OB-GYN or midwife? What would you advise new mothers?

Pictured.