From premed to med

So in the last two months I managed to do most of the things on my list. We moved nearly all our stuff down and unpacked while I was 37 weeks along. SK's birthday bash went smoothly. Our house is rented. Baby #2, SE arrived and is happy and healthy. We waited until she was two weeks old, packed up our remaining items in a U-haul and made the ten hour drive to our new home. (It's really only supposed to take six hours, but every 30 miles someone either needed to be fed or had to pee.) And now we are here, adjusting to life with a new family member, in a new city, with new schools and jobs. Everyone I've told about our moving experience has thought we're completely nuts, which we are, but we had a plan, stuck to it as much as we could and anything else that came up, we decided to just roll with it. In fact, these last four words have really become my motto as of late, so much so that I can basically take a picture of our crazy lives at any moment and have #justrollwithit be a fitting caption.

My first week of school was packed with such moments. No one to drop off or pick up SK from school on Monday? Just stay home with grandma and do some crafts, eat lots of treats and watch too much TV (#justrollwithit). Get to school and realize I brought my pump but forgot all my pump parts at home? Use the lactation room's backup pump and try to ignore the idea that others have used the same pump (#justrollwithit). Motion-sensor lights turn off in lactation room while pumping, leaving me fumbling around in the dark? Dance like a mad woman in the chair, still attached to my pump until the lights turn on (#justrollwithit....ok there might have been some expletives here and there).

I'm starting to realize that my med school experience is going to be a little bit different than what I had envisioned. I missed out on most of the socializing opportunities my first week because I had to run down to the first floor lactation room to pump while everyone else ate lunch. In fact, it is lunch time right now as I write this and I'm being serenaded by the gentle pff pff pff of my lovely pump. When our social calendar first came out I foolishly rsvp'd to several different events which I'm now realizing was a tad bit ambitious. I guess having a preschooler made me forget what newborn schedules are like; I forgot about the eating every 3 hours thing and the getting up multiple times at night routine. I am feeling a little bit left out, but I know the social aspect of med school will come with time, especially when the little one is a bit older. My biggest struggle right now is trying to figure out when I'm going to find time to study and I'm hoping with some trial and error I'll figure it out. Yesterday an assignment took me 5 hours...maybe 1 hour of actual work in total, 1 hour playing DJ for SK so she could perform dance routines in the living room, 30 minutes of reading Fancy Nancy books, 30 minutes of redirection, timeouts and talks, 1 hour of snuggles and cuddles, 45 minutes of breastfeeding and 15 minutes of accidental sleeping. By the time everyone else is actually in bed and I can study without distraction, I'm about to face-plant into my laptop.

I am loving what I'm learning though and I'm thankful to be in a great program. It's the logistical part that's scaring me right now. I can feel the dreaded "what have I gotten myself into" question creeping into my mind sometimes, but I'm pushing it aside for now. I'm rolling along and I'll be rolling with it for the next 4 years and probably thereafter.