Hello from Ticketyboo

I am so excited to be a new contributor to this awesome blog for momma docs. 

I’m a Canadian internal medicine resident in the early years of training. My spouse is also a resident, and we became parents to our wonderful baby boy earlier this year.

Thanks to Canada’s parental leave policy, my spouse and I were each able to take approx. 6 months of leave to spend with our little one (really lucky, I know). I took the first 6 months, because of childbirth and breastfeeding and all that jazz, while my spouse is taking the last 6 months. The shared leave is supposed to help coordinate our residency completion dates, and make some of my upcoming hectic rotations more manageable. Pre-baby, I also felt strongly about sharing the “primary parent” role with my spouse. Now, I see taking care of our baby more as a treat rather than as a responsibility to share (that’s what bonding will do to you I guess!), so I’m doubting my initial reasoning. It’ll be interesting to see how we feel once our year is up. 

My time of full-time snuggling with bébé is almost up and I’m soon returning to residency. Even though I know I’ve been very fortunate to have MONTHs of time with our little one, I’ll nonetheless miss him tons while I’m away doing the resident thing. 

In the next year, I’m hoping to share my experiences as a resident and mama, attempting to balance it all (or realistically, just survive it!).

Sincerely,

Ticketyboo

P.S. My pseudonym is an infrequently used Canuck expression that means “going fine” (e.g. “everything is tickety-boo”), which is how I hope life will be going in the coming months/years. Also, I think “tickety-boo” has a nice ring to it, although it does sound like something you might name a teddy bear...that’s not bad though, right?