Moms can (almost) have it all

They say you can’t have it all, and they’re right. But you can have most of it. By that I mean you can achieve a work-life balance that will enable you to thrive in your career while you raise your dream family. While this goal may never be easy, and you may always feel like you want to do more, give more, and reach more, that’s just the nature of the beast. We are all overachievers. That’s how we’re programmed; it’s in our DNA. Why else would we have taken on so much debt and sacrificed so many years for a career? And while many of us specifically chose hospital medicine so we could offset our stressful, hectic work life with plenty of time off for self and family, our reality is still replete with everyday challenges and, frequently, burnout.

We eagerly seek out best practices to optimize patient care, but how often do we seek advice from trusted colleagues on their “best practices” for balancing work and home? While talking with some of my female colleagues recently, I expressed my dismay that my dishwasher had broken and I frequently found myself washing dinner dishes as I juggled homework for my two 6-year-olds and responded to a seemingly incessant pager. One laughed as she recalled the pains she went through to have not one, but two dishwashers installed in her kitchen during her remodel. Washing dishes by hand simply wasn’t realistic for her. Her two little boys demanded whatever physical and emotional energy she had left after a stressful day at the hospital.

It is okay to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and it is cathartic to accept that you may never be the homemaker your mother was and forget about matching your grandmothers’ skillsets. At some Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, new members stand up and introduce themselves by saying, “Hello, my name is ___, and I am an alcoholic.” I personally felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders when one day, I finally acknowledged I didn’t have all the answers and I could never follow all of the parenting experts’ advice. After all, experts come and go, and with it, their expert recommendations. I don’t even want to abide by the “no more than 30 minutes of screen time per day” mantra. My parents raised five children on rerun after rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Brady Bunch,” and other sitcoms, not to mention movies and musicals, and every one of us has a terminal degree, and still remember how much fun we had as children. My parents set high expectations, and they taught us how to reach them, plain and simple. We worked hard and we got to play hard, too.

The bottom line is that different techniques work for different people. Find out which ones work for you and your family and pursue them, regardless of what others may think. And above all, don’t let guilt get the best of you, because it will eat away at you and potentially destroy all you want to accomplish. You know, the guilt of missing a soccer game or a school play, or even the guilt of stopping for fast food when you are just too tired to cook a nutritious meal. Give yourself a break. The realistic goal is to optimize your work-life balance; the elusive one is to perfect it.

Dr. Hester is a hospitalist at Baltimore-Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, Md. She is the creator of the Patient Whiz, a patient-engagement app for iOS. Reach her at healthsavvy@aol.com.

They say you can’t have it all, and they’re right. But you can have most of it. By that I mean you can achieve a work-life balance that will enable you to thrive in your career while you raise your dream family. While this goal may never be easy, and you may always feel like you want to do more, give more, and reach more, that’s just the nature of the beast. We are all overachievers. That’s how we’re programmed; it’s in our DNA. Why else would we have taken on so much debt and sacrificed so many years for a career? And while many of us specifically chose hospital medicine so we could offset our stressful, hectic work life with plenty of time off for self and family, our reality is still replete with everyday challenges and, frequently, burnout.

We eagerly seek out best practices to optimize patient care, but how often do we seek advice from trusted colleagues on their “best practices” for balancing work and home? While talking with some of my female colleagues recently, I expressed my dismay that my dishwasher had broken and I frequently found myself washing dinner dishes as I juggled homework for my two 6-year-olds and responded to a seemingly incessant pager. One laughed as she recalled the pains she went through to have not one, but two dishwashers installed in her kitchen during her remodel. Washing dishes by hand simply wasn’t realistic for her. Her two little boys demanded whatever physical and emotional energy she had left after a stressful day at the hospital.

It is okay to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and it is cathartic to accept that you may never be the homemaker your mother was and forget about matching your grandmothers’ skillsets. At some Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, new members stand up and introduce themselves by saying, “Hello, my name is ___, and I am an alcoholic.” I personally felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders when one day, I finally acknowledged I didn’t have all the answers and I could never follow all of the parenting experts’ advice. After all, experts come and go, and with it, their expert recommendations. I don’t even want to abide by the “no more than 30 minutes of screen time per day” mantra. My parents raised five children on rerun after rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Brady Bunch,” and other sitcoms, not to mention movies and musicals, and every one of us has a terminal degree, and still remember how much fun we had as children. My parents set high expectations, and they taught us how to reach them, plain and simple. We worked hard and we got to play hard, too.

The bottom line is that different techniques work for different people. Find out which ones work for you and your family and pursue them, regardless of what others may think. And above all, don’t let guilt get the best of you, because it will eat away at you and potentially destroy all you want to accomplish. You know, the guilt of missing a soccer game or a school play, or even the guilt of stopping for fast food when you are just too tired to cook a nutritious meal. Give yourself a break. The realistic goal is to optimize your work-life balance; the elusive one is to perfect it.

Dr. Hester is a hospitalist at Baltimore-Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, Md. She is the creator of the Patient Whiz, a patient-engagement app for iOS. Reach her at healthsavvy@aol.com.

They say you can’t have it all, and they’re right. But you can have most of it. By that I mean you can achieve a work-life balance that will enable you to thrive in your career while you raise your dream family. While this goal may never be easy, and you may always feel like you want to do more, give more, and reach more, that’s just the nature of the beast. We are all overachievers. That’s how we’re programmed; it’s in our DNA. Why else would we have taken on so much debt and sacrificed so many years for a career? And while many of us specifically chose hospital medicine so we could offset our stressful, hectic work life with plenty of time off for self and family, our reality is still replete with everyday challenges and, frequently, burnout.

We eagerly seek out best practices to optimize patient care, but how often do we seek advice from trusted colleagues on their “best practices” for balancing work and home? While talking with some of my female colleagues recently, I expressed my dismay that my dishwasher had broken and I frequently found myself washing dinner dishes as I juggled homework for my two 6-year-olds and responded to a seemingly incessant pager. One laughed as she recalled the pains she went through to have not one, but two dishwashers installed in her kitchen during her remodel. Washing dishes by hand simply wasn’t realistic for her. Her two little boys demanded whatever physical and emotional energy she had left after a stressful day at the hospital.

It is okay to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and it is cathartic to accept that you may never be the homemaker your mother was and forget about matching your grandmothers’ skillsets. At some Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, new members stand up and introduce themselves by saying, “Hello, my name is ___, and I am an alcoholic.” I personally felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders when one day, I finally acknowledged I didn’t have all the answers and I could never follow all of the parenting experts’ advice. After all, experts come and go, and with it, their expert recommendations. I don’t even want to abide by the “no more than 30 minutes of screen time per day” mantra. My parents raised five children on rerun after rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Brady Bunch,” and other sitcoms, not to mention movies and musicals, and every one of us has a terminal degree, and still remember how much fun we had as children. My parents set high expectations, and they taught us how to reach them, plain and simple. We worked hard and we got to play hard, too.

The bottom line is that different techniques work for different people. Find out which ones work for you and your family and pursue them, regardless of what others may think. And above all, don’t let guilt get the best of you, because it will eat away at you and potentially destroy all you want to accomplish. You know, the guilt of missing a soccer game or a school play, or even the guilt of stopping for fast food when you are just too tired to cook a nutritious meal. Give yourself a break. The realistic goal is to optimize your work-life balance; the elusive one is to perfect it.

Dr. Hester is a hospitalist at Baltimore-Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, Md. She is the creator of the Patient Whiz, a patient-engagement app for iOS. Reach her at healthsavvy@aol.com.