Sleepovers

Some of my fondest memories of residency are of course those that involve my children.

Internship year, the first year of residency also known as "hell year" is very demanding to say the least. During that year call comes all too often which means sleeping at the hospital. The small hospital we covered involved a rather unique situation in which our sleeping quarters where not within the hospital, due to lack of space. Instead, the hospital provided us with a house across the street from the hospital. "House" is a bit of a misleading term. Yes there was a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. But there were lots of insects, multiple deadbolts on the doors, poor water pressure and loud neighbors. What could you expect from a house that was known to be a drug house from its previous owners? This being the case, a little cleaning and attention to personal safety the "crack house" quickly became a second home.

There were some nights when either Daddy had to be at work early in the morning, before I could get home; or Mommy had been really busy and the kids just missed me that we had family sleepovers. My husband would bring the two kids (there were only two then, I was pregnant with number three) for dinner with me. We would eat in the cafeteria together, hoping the pager would be quiet long enough for us to enjoy the hospital cuisine together and hopefully have an ice cream treat for dessert. Then the kids would go over the the house with daddy, get ready for bed and watch a little t.v. or movie. I would make rounds on patients then run across the street for good night kisses. Then back to the hospital for more work and hopefully crawl into bed sometime before midnight. Once in bed there was no predicting as to how often the pager would go off or how often I would have to go back and forth across the street but it never mattered to me. Snuggling up with my babies for five minutes was worth every lost minute of sleep and every run back and forth across that street.

In the mornings the kids would eat breakfast and sometimes sit quietly watching television while I attended morning rounds in the adjoining conference room and completed signing off my patients to the daytime resident. It was during this long hour that emergency panic buttons were pushed, donut crumbs were strewn everywhere and stern attendings who demanded perfection and respect couldn't help but crack a smile at the little faces that often wandered into the conference room.

Our sleepovers were always crazy and it often felt like that pager knew when the kids were there and would go off at the most inopportune times but we survived and we did it as a family every step of the way.


"believe in your dreams for all dreams can come true"
-dr. mom of 4