August 1 to 7 is National Breastfeeding Week. I wish it wasn’t. I said it. I’m a family medicine physician with experience in working with moms and newborns in their feeding journeys. I don’t support a breastfeeding week. I wish it was something else l…
Today at work, a mother asked me what I would do if it was my son in the isolette and not hers. It’s not the first time I have been asked this. I understand where the question comes from, and yet I’m at a loss of what to say every time. Not because I h…
This is the million-dollar question that I’ve been asked over and over again by distraught parents wanting to do right by their children. Parents want to have their children stay home so they can keep them healthy and safe. At the same time, they are w…
Writing a pandemic novel is sort of like running a mock code. You may feel a tinge of fear as you work through the actively changing scenario, but mostly you feel the excitement of the challenge. Yet when an actual patient is deteriorating before you, …
Walking into the COVID ward in the children’s hospital, those words seemed etched on an invisible wall, a wall that I wanted to choose to stay behind. It was a wall I could stay behind for the first couple months of the pandemic where multiple studies…
“Where were you born?” “Here!” Yousef (not real name) with happy, gleaming eyes excitedly pointed at Algeria on the laminated world map hanging on the bulletin board in the exam room. “And Dad was born here,” pointing to Morocco with mom nodding approv…
Concern There is no debate on the insurmountable value of kids needing to be in schools. CDC data shows that children account for 6% of COVID-19 cases and 0.2% of all deaths. Yet, the system can miserably fail if bullied into opening. Children could…
How I long for the good old days of mom-shaming. Back then, you could tsk-tsk over any number of maternal decisions: breastfeeding or bottle-feeding; having children out of wedlock or in wedlock with another woman; staying at home, or working full time…
We are tired, overwhelmed, very committed, missing our families, and carrying each patient with us as we try to deliver excellent care in a very disorienting time. We worry about the health of our families and friends and community as well as our own h…
“There is no such thing as balance, just different degrees of imbalance at different times,” said the speaker. I was at a work-life balance panel for women in medicine during medical school. As a young woman just starting my medical training, I found t…
