- Joined
- Jul 17, 2006
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 3
Hello all~
I'm new to the board and have really enjoyed reading the posts here, particularly in the non-traditional forum. I am looking for some advice and thought some of you might be able to help. To give you some background on myself....
I am 31. After many years in health-related jobs, considering vet school all the while, I have decided that I'd like to pursue vet medicine. I am currently working on pre-reqs and plan to apply to school either in 2007 or 2008, which means if accepted I would start school in either 2008 or 2009.
Of course this decision has come at a time when my husband and I are trying to also figure out when to have children. I have some questions / concerns about timing pregnancy that have been touched on in previous threads but I couldn't get a satisfactory answer from them since they focused mainly on residencies, and I wanted to raise the question again for some advice.
Many of the posts I've read say that no time is the perfect time so just jump in and do it. They all seem to say that if you really work at it, you can handle both school and pregnancy/early child care. However, I am terrified of starting school, getting pregnant and then realizing that I cannot handle both school and an infant. I've read many books and talked to many people about having children and keep hearing that caring for a newborn is unbelievably exhausting mentally and physically to the point that even if home and not working a woman barely has enough energy to take a shower. If this is true for most women, how in the world could you throw schooling into the equation?
Aside from this concern (which I'm assuming is most relevant when the baby is very young and everyone is adjusting to each other), I am concerned about juggling everything time-wise and money-wise. Time-wise I am concerned about being in school for many many hours a day, then having to study, adding clinical hours into the mix when those rotations start. I am concerned I wouldn't have enough time for my child; that my husband would start resenting me (we have discussed all this and he is being very supportive especially since he has been urging me to go back to school, but experience is different from talking about something); that we would shift as so many couple seem to do unconsciously and unwillingly into gender stereotypes and that even though I would be the one with less time that I would be expected to take on the majority of child care.
My husband works full-time, and we would not have much family support in terms of babysitting because all of our parents still work full-time too. So I am concerned about finances, because I would need to quit my job to go back to school full-time. So we would be stretching one paycheck to cover all of our expenses, which would include day care.
I still have at least 2 years before going back to school and part of me thinks it would be better to have a child now and start school when he/she is 1-2 years old. But I'm not quite ready to have a child right now and I don't want to rush having children to squeeze it into other plans. On the other hand, I don't want to put off having kids until I'm in school and then think "what have I done??" timing-wise.
I am at a point in my life when I don't want to give up one for the other, but I am finding myself alternately thinking "I can do both, I just have to work very hard", and feeling disillusioned and disappointed wondering if it's really possible without a super-human amount of resilience and energy. I'm also feeling rather bitter at myself for having taken so long to realize I want to both go back to school and think about having kids. Seems like life would be much easier if either (1) we had kids who were already in school when I start back to school myself, or (2) I was younger so I could delay having children until I finished school. I know I can't dwell on this because it can't be helped, but I'm finding myself seriously wondering if I can handle both at the same time.
Does anyone have any constructive thoughts or advice they can share? Or maybe just some encouragement?
Thanks to anyone who read my long post! Sorry if it was disjointed and rambling.
I'm new to the board and have really enjoyed reading the posts here, particularly in the non-traditional forum. I am looking for some advice and thought some of you might be able to help. To give you some background on myself....
I am 31. After many years in health-related jobs, considering vet school all the while, I have decided that I'd like to pursue vet medicine. I am currently working on pre-reqs and plan to apply to school either in 2007 or 2008, which means if accepted I would start school in either 2008 or 2009.
Of course this decision has come at a time when my husband and I are trying to also figure out when to have children. I have some questions / concerns about timing pregnancy that have been touched on in previous threads but I couldn't get a satisfactory answer from them since they focused mainly on residencies, and I wanted to raise the question again for some advice.
Many of the posts I've read say that no time is the perfect time so just jump in and do it. They all seem to say that if you really work at it, you can handle both school and pregnancy/early child care. However, I am terrified of starting school, getting pregnant and then realizing that I cannot handle both school and an infant. I've read many books and talked to many people about having children and keep hearing that caring for a newborn is unbelievably exhausting mentally and physically to the point that even if home and not working a woman barely has enough energy to take a shower. If this is true for most women, how in the world could you throw schooling into the equation?
Aside from this concern (which I'm assuming is most relevant when the baby is very young and everyone is adjusting to each other), I am concerned about juggling everything time-wise and money-wise. Time-wise I am concerned about being in school for many many hours a day, then having to study, adding clinical hours into the mix when those rotations start. I am concerned I wouldn't have enough time for my child; that my husband would start resenting me (we have discussed all this and he is being very supportive especially since he has been urging me to go back to school, but experience is different from talking about something); that we would shift as so many couple seem to do unconsciously and unwillingly into gender stereotypes and that even though I would be the one with less time that I would be expected to take on the majority of child care.
My husband works full-time, and we would not have much family support in terms of babysitting because all of our parents still work full-time too. So I am concerned about finances, because I would need to quit my job to go back to school full-time. So we would be stretching one paycheck to cover all of our expenses, which would include day care.
I still have at least 2 years before going back to school and part of me thinks it would be better to have a child now and start school when he/she is 1-2 years old. But I'm not quite ready to have a child right now and I don't want to rush having children to squeeze it into other plans. On the other hand, I don't want to put off having kids until I'm in school and then think "what have I done??" timing-wise.
I am at a point in my life when I don't want to give up one for the other, but I am finding myself alternately thinking "I can do both, I just have to work very hard", and feeling disillusioned and disappointed wondering if it's really possible without a super-human amount of resilience and energy. I'm also feeling rather bitter at myself for having taken so long to realize I want to both go back to school and think about having kids. Seems like life would be much easier if either (1) we had kids who were already in school when I start back to school myself, or (2) I was younger so I could delay having children until I finished school. I know I can't dwell on this because it can't be helped, but I'm finding myself seriously wondering if I can handle both at the same time.
Does anyone have any constructive thoughts or advice they can share? Or maybe just some encouragement?
Thanks to anyone who read my long post! Sorry if it was disjointed and rambling.