AAWP at my school sponsors "The View" where they have a panel of DPMs for Q&A (one older DPM, one younger, one resident, one 4th year student... usually all women). It was pretty cool to listen to, and the general consensus when this issue came up was to have kids while in pod school if you want to have children. They said to do the 5yr program or whatever if you need to, and while there will never be a "good time," pod school is the best time. It was mentioned that you can always make up tests or clinic eventually, but if you don't have kids during school, you will end up missing out on serious training or $ later on (or will just end up 40 one day and never "got around to" having kids).
I'm male, so I'm sure my opinion matters next to nil
, but I thnk pod school is the best time also. A couple of my classmates are pregnant right now, and a couple of women in the 5yr track have had kids too. Besides, use some evidence-based medicine here: you lower your risk for ovarian CA, cut your BRCA risk in half, and have way lower risks of birth defects if you have a kid before age 30.
I think my fiancee and I will try to get pregnant sometime when I'm in residency (kids are basically free for the first few years if you have good insurance; they don't eat much and clothes are cheap). The only major expense I forsee is that I do want to have enough $ in place so she is able to take a couple years totally off from her job and I can pay the mortgage and bills with my salary and some loans (she'll definetly deserve it by then for supporting my broke *** for so long during school lol).
It's a very interesting issue and I was just giving some hearsay from that AAWP forum, though. Maybe it helped a bit, but hopefully some female practicing DPMs or female residents can chime into this thread to help you out. Why don't you also shadow some female DPM mothers and ask them what worked for them?
... missing cases and making your other residents work harder...
This is a fairly big issue to consider.^ I think residency is the worst time to have children. Your body is under a tremendous amount of stress (it is during school also assuming you work hard, but even moreso in residency). Some of your fellow residents and possibly attendings will
not be pleased if you have to miss time.
I know I will try to be tolerant if I end up working with a female co-resident who gets pregnant, but I feel that it is fairly inconsiderate to your co-workers whether it is planned or not - esp if you take a heavy surgical program with long hours. How would you feel if I took a leave of absence and left you with extra research and cases when you're already swamped?
If you want to have kids during residency, I'd suggest picking a position with a female director. You are likely to get more empathy there.
