I’ve decided to try single-tasking. It’s not going to be easy. But let’s face it: doing mul­ti­ple things at once isn’t nec­es­sary a good thing. You’re unable to do either task well. I’ll admit there are plenty of times I want to check my email on my phone while I feed Con­nor or while I’m get­ting myself ready in the morn­ing. But what ben­e­fit does that pro­vide? Ulti­mately, it slows me down and takes away time that I have with the lit­tle guy. I really think that tech­nol­ogy is mak­ing Amer­ica lazy and impa­tient. It’s going to be hard when I have a spare moment not to reach for my phone with thoughts of work­ing ahead. I think rather in that spare moment I should reflect on the day or sim­ply just take a few deep breaths to relax. Single-tasking. What a con­cept. I’ll admit how­ever that these sen­tences were orig­i­nally recorded on my voice recorder as I was dri­ving to work. Inspi­ra­tion hit me for a blog and it was my nat­ural instinct to just grab the phone and get my thoughts out ASAP. … This is going to be interesting.

Con­nor has decided he’s a big boy. He’s done breast­feed­ing, no longer needs a bot­tle, and has made the leap to only drink­ing from a sippy cup. Over the week­end I was putting away the bot­tles and breast pump and was sur­prised by all of the emo­tions com­ing over me. Part of me was def­i­nitely happy. No wor­ry­ing how we’d make the tran­si­tion off the bot­tle. No more lug­ging the breast pump with me every­where I went. No more hav­ing to rush home to feed him at the end of the day since he liked to drink around 5pm. No more find­ing time in between patients to hide in my office and pump. Pic­ture this (or on sec­ond thought, maybe not)… There I’d be try­ing to get paper­work done or try­ing to dic­tate with my breast pump whirring in the back­ground…. Oh, what the tran­scrip­tion­ists must think. … How­ever, at the same time I was rather sad and melan­choly about the whole thing. I always knew this time would come when he wouldn’t need me to feed. It’s excit­ing and I’m glad I had that time to spend with him.
Of course he still needs me and loves me, but I was sad about that part of our rela­tion­ship being over.

Ear­lier this week, I was pre­sent­ing at the Colum­bia Center’s child­birth class. I stood there and was telling expec­tant par­ents how to care for their new­born and I couldn’t help but think about how just a lit­tle over a year ago I was in their shoes. It’s amaz­ing. One year ago I was excited, ner­vous, scared, and happy all at the same time. Would I really know what he wanted when he cried? Would I really know how to take care of him? What would I do if I couldn’t get him to stop cry­ing? Now, I’d like to think that I could earn a gold medal for the speed with which his dia­per gets changed. Not to men­tion the fact that lately he has an aver­sion to lying on his back and I’ve learned how to change dia­pers with him lying on his stom­ach. Well, wet dia­pers at least.

A lot sure changes in a year. Par­ent­ing changes you. It teaches you patience. It teaches you how to truly mul­ti­task. It teaches you how to do things with one hand. There’s always all sorts of hype in the media, includ­ing the recent TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle, about how to par­ent, things you should do, and things you should not do. As far as I’m con­cerned, as long as you love your child, try your best, and never put them in harm’s way, you’re doing a good job. Congratulations.

Epit­omy of mul­ti­task­ing: apply­ing makeup, strength­en­ing my left bicep, and bond­ing with my “I’m-plagued-by-separation-anxiety-and-can’t-be-away-from-mom-or-dad” son. To be hon­est though, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love feel­ing needed and I love that he turns to me when he’s scared or sad. I’ll prob­a­bly be singing a dif­fer­ent tune though when he starts to cry as I leave him at day­care. Right now he loves his day­care bud­dies and sim­ply waves good­bye to me.

I received a phone call at work this morn­ing that my lit­tle man had a high fever at day­care and had to come home. Luck­ily my hus­band has flex­i­bil­ity in his career and is able to stay home this after­noon. I am thank­ful for that, although I really wish I could be the one to hold and cud­dle Con­nor, since I know that’s what he’s going to need.

I like to tell my hus­band that he has many titles: father, hus­band, handy­man, part time cook. I think we can add one more to that list: nurse. Since he’s the one home this after­noon that means that he needs to abide by my type A per­son­al­ity by writ­ing down every tem­per­a­ture, all oral intake, and every dose of Tylenol. This is how I’m used to mon­i­tor­ing child­hood ill­nesses at work and I don’t know how to do it any dif­fer­ent with my lit­tle one. Despite see­ing sick chil­dren fre­quently at work, it’s just not the same when it’s your own child. My heart broke because I wish there was a way to wave my magic wand and make him bet­ter. He still gave me a small smile, but he wasn’t the same spunky lit­tle guy I’m used to.

It’s kind of ironic. I’ve always told par­ents, “This is going to be harder on you than it will be for your child.” Being sick, teething, and get­ting shots are no fun for the chil­dren but they’re resilient. It’s always much harder for the par­ent to see the child cry or be in pain. … Looks like it’s time for me to take some of my own advice.

Good morn­ing fel­low par­ents! I’m excited to write my first blog for Colum­bia Cen­ter. My name is Dr. Kate Bur­rows. I am an internist and pedi­a­tri­cian. What that means is that I am a physi­cian who takes care of chil­dren and adults. In this blog I look for­ward to shar­ing my jour­ney as a work­ing mom as well as share health related infor­ma­tion about tak­ing care of your­self and your chil­dren. I don’t want you to think that I am an expert on par­ent­ing, how­ever. New chal­lenges present them­selves on prac­ti­cally a daily basis. The most impor­tant thing I’ve learned is that you have to stay patient and roll with the punches. It’s funny. No mat­ter how pre­pared we think we are, there’s no prepar­ing you for the magic, hap­pi­ness, and (let’s be hon­est) exhaus­tion that comes with moth­er­hood. And just when you think you have it fig­ured out, your child learns a new trick or starts cut­ting another tooth, and the whole ball­game changes. I hope you fol­low me along on my jour­ney of moth­er­hood and share your expe­ri­ences with me so we can learn from each other.