When is a good time to have a baby?

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golf sucks

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Hi. I am a female, matched into a great ophtho program, and will be interested in doing a fellowship after, academic career track.

I am interviewing at a few cush transitional programs, but also some hard medicine/surgery ones as back-ups. Is PGY-3 a good year to have a baby? Will this make it harder for me to get a fellowship? Is it crazy to consider having a baby during my PGY-1 year if it is relatively cush (and no one will have to take my call)? It seems that after residency I will be trying to make partner, and that will be a bad time too.

Dr. Doan, I have heard you have two kids so I would love to hear your advice. I am not a super star like you though.....but I do have a supportive spouse.
Much thanks to all.

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I'd say the best time to have a baby is immediately after fellowship or residency. Having a baby during residency disrupts your own training and potentially hurts the other residents.
 
This is also a topic of interest for me since my wife is also persuing ophtho (she is a few years behind) and we are planning to have a baby sometime around her MS4- PGY-1. It seems that a cush PGY-1 year is a good time to have a child or at least better than PGY-2 ophtho. Learning curve is very steep your first ophtho year and you don't want to miss a lot of it (maternity leave, etc., etc.). Plus, if your great ophtho program is as front-loaded as mine, you end up working VERY hard that year. One of my classmate's wife had a baby at the biginning of July last year; he saw his kid so little for the first couple of months that every time he tried to play with the kid, the kid would start crying. My friend knew at that point that it's time to take paternaty leave :) .

I did a cush PGY-1 program and I say you can totally get away with having a kid during that year. At resident-friendler programs PD will work with you to re-arrange your rotations to accomodte your pregnancy. One girl at my PGY-1 did 2 months of rads by the end of her term. The key, in my opinion, is not to let the program know that you are planning to get pregnant; you probably won't be ranked very high ;) .

Any other opinions?
 
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Long time reader, first time poster...I finished residency in 2004, and my wife and I just had our 4th child. Our first 2 were before residency (first was during PGY-1 year, and second was during time spent as an Air Force General Medical Officer). Our 3rd was during PGY-4, which I felt was the best time in residency to have a child. February/March of PGY-4 might be good timing...fellowship secure, time to get used to the baby before fellowship starts, past the rigors of residency.
 
Welcome to the forum! It's always great to have another recent gradute among users!

It's amazing- 4 kids! Is your wife also in medicine?
 
golf sucks said:
Hi. I am a female, matched into a great ophtho program, and will be interested in doing a fellowship after, academic career track.

I am interviewing at a few cush transitional programs, but also some hard medicine/surgery ones as back-ups. Is PGY-3 a good year to have a baby? Will this make it harder for me to get a fellowship? Is it crazy to consider having a baby during my PGY-1 year if it is relatively cush (and no one will have to take my call)? It seems that after residency I will be trying to make partner, and that will be a bad time too.

Dr. Doan, I have heard you have two kids so I would love to hear your advice. I am not a super star like you though.....but I do have a supportive spouse.
Much thanks to all.

I would agree, 1st year is not the best time to have a newborn. But any other time would probably be fine. Just realize, you dont want to be out on maternity leave during your cornea rotation if you want to do a cornea fellowship, etc. Basically, as you have probably heard, there will never be a "perfect" time. Just do it when you want to. There are a lot of residents with kids in my program. Our plastics fellow has 4.
 
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