"I promise we will all do better if you lift up and empower other women, because guess what when the time comes and you need a favor they will then return it to you. We need to stop this you or me mentality and competition. I think women are pitted against each other more than men are and I'm like there is enough to go around, I promise."

This episode is with Dr. Tiffany Moon, an anesthesiologist in Dallas, Texas.

In this episode we talk about:
- Having twin girls as an attending
- Her decision to go back to work after 6 weeks of leave
- Her thoughts on distribution of work and time at home during the little kid years
- Starting a wine company with her husband
- Starting a candle company during the COVID pandemic, somewhat accidentally
- Writing a memoir, which comes out in Spring 2025
- Creating the LeadHer Summit to empower women

LeadHer Summit Nov 8-10, 2024:
- Click here to register
- Use code "MOM" for $300 off registration

Connect with Dr. Tiffany Moon @tiffanymoonmd:
- Instagram
- Tiktok
- X
- Youtube

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

"I feel like I was able to spend those years of fellowship really asking this question of how do I want this career to fit into my life. Before I never really
understood what it was going to feel like to be a mom or to be a wife or what it was going to feel like to just want to be Rene and who I am and the rest of the things. For so long, understandably so, the main focus was how do I become the best doctor and that's what you need to get through medical school and residency to get the best training to be a good doctor but I started to realize that if I was only thinknig about my career and that was it and I wasn't giving ample priority to the rest of the things around it, then I would eventually hate my job for what it was taking away from the other parts."

This episode is with Dr. Renee Rodriguez Paro, a pediatric cardiologist in California.

In this episode we talk about:
- The decision to change your name
- Being married to a physician - the good and the bad!
- Starting a podcast with her husband called "Reconciling Medicine"
- Having a baby in pediatric residency and going back to work after 6 weeks
- Starting fellowship with a 6 month old baby and questioning if she should leave fellowship
- Considering surgery and ultimately deciding she wasn't sure want to be part of a two surgeon family and she loved clinic just as much if not more than the OR
- Shifting career priorities pre- and post-kids
- Making the decision to leave academic medicine
- Her view on part-time work for herself as well as globally for other physicians
- Becoming department chair
- Running marathons!

Connect with Renee:
- Instagram @drreneeparo

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

"We both knew that one of us would need to be able to still be a default parent and I actually wanted that role, which I'm sure we'll talk about it's also very hard to be a default parent and a doctor, but that was sort of the thing I didn't want to give up when I went into medicine."

This episode is with Dr. Molly Brett, a primary care physician in Colorado.

We talk about:
- Deciding early on that she wanted to be a primary care doctor for multiple reasons
- Being in a dual physician family
- Being the default parent and wanting this role
- Camping with babies
- Negotiating a part-time job that allows her to be truly part time so that she can go off grid and go camping with her family
- The guilt around hiring a nanny to help her family in the mornings
- How she chooses which projects to say yes to and which ones to say no to
- Choosing the daycare that works for your lives (i.e. long hours) and not the most "fancy" childcare
- How to advise women to choose a specialty/career that works for them


Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

This episode is with Dr. Kimberly Buss, a family medicine physician in California. We discuss:

- Having a miscarriage in her second trimester
- Having a young child at home while in her residency training
- One of her children having health issues and how that affected her as a mom and a physician
- Her work as a primary care physician, particularly with patients with diabetes
- Being a lifelong learner
- and so much more!

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

This episode is with Dr. Grace Farris, a hospitalist in Texas and published author. We discuss:

- The inspiration between her comics, and specifically "weekend mom"
- The decision to move her family from Boston, to NYC, and then to Texas
- Working as a hospitalist in NYC during the COVID pandemic with two young boys
- Working full time
- Coaching youth soccer
- Her next graphic novel See One, Do One, Teach One, which is a memoir of her time in medical school and residency
- and so much more!

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

Connect with Dr. Grace Farris:
- Instagram @coupdegracefarris
- Mom Milestones and Mom Calendar

"I felt totally stripped of everything that I had ever thought of myself because I was not going to work, so I was really kind of just tied to my house for 6 weeks. I was bored! I wanted to be working, I wanted to be doing easy cases. The baby slept so much. I'm like what do I do? And then she never really latched and so I was exclusively pumping straight away. I could have tried breastfeeding for longer but I knew I only had 5 weeks of maternity leave and I wasn't going to fight her every feeding for 4 of those 5 weeks, I was just not about it. So, I think I lost a lot of that bonding with her because I just felt like a milk maid. I couldn't figure out how to pump and hold her and feed all at once. It was just a lot. Alex was doing a lot of the feedings while I was just pumping all the time."

This episode is with Dr. Nichole Shaw, an orthopedic surgeon who is completing her hand fellowship at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We discuss:
- The challenges and benefits of having a partner in medicine:
---- Choosing whose career they will prioritize when
---- Navigating the military match (for her husband) with the traditional match
---- Choosing a subspecialty that she loves and that also allows her to be present with her family
---- Their motto as a couple being "M.D. - make due"
- Thinking for a long time that she wanted to be single and not have kids and be solely focused on her career and how that changed for her
- Struggling on maternity leave and being excited to go back to work
- The decision to keep her last name
- Her daughter being diagnosed with failure to thrive and all that ensued after that
- Doing long distance with her husband throughout multiple stages of their relationship
- Her current long distance setup (Nichole in fellowship in Pittsburgh and her husband in Chicago with their daughter) and how they had to make the tough decision of where their daughter would be for this year
- And so much more!

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

"It sounds easy but it's really hard when you've worked this hard to be a physician to say 'oh I'm gonna do a little less'. What I've realized is that myself and I think maybe some listeners out there might resonate with, we often feel like our productivity and our value to society is based on how many procedures we do, patients we see, hours we put in. Usually I would be the first one there and the last one to leave and you know we wear it kind of as a badge of honor, but over time that narrative in our head can really lead to burnout."


This episode is with Dr. Shanika Esparaz, a board certified ophthalmologist and welness coach for women in healthcare.

In the first half of the episode we discuss Shani's personal experiences:
- Her experience with burnout and the unexpected ways it showed up for her
- The pivotal moment where her daughter was injured in the care of their nanny and how this made her re-evaluate everything
- Her experience getting a coah (it was great!) and how this inspired her to become a coach herself
- Getting a coach and then became a coach herself

In the second half of the episode (starting at 25:00), Shani puts her coaching hat on and gives some invaluable advice for those of you who may struggle with any of the following:
- Recognizing burnout in yourself
- Realizing you may be burnt out but being frustrated by the fact that it's your work environment that's the problem and not you
- Feeling like taking care of yourself is just one more thing to add to your plate that you don't have time for
- The factors to consider when thinking of switching to part time
- Getting started journaling (can be so quick but so beneficial!)
- Detaching your worth from things outside of yourself like productivity, promotions, etc.
- Performing a time audit
- and so much more!

Connect with Moms of Medicine:
- Instagram @moms_of_medicine
- Momsofmedicine@gmail.com

Connect with Dr. Shanika Esparaz:
- Website
- Doctorgoals podcast episode on setting up a direct care practice
- @shani_esparazmd on instagram

"The big bottom line, ok, this is the big bottom line - young moms and women in general we are so self critical and we are so down on ourselves, and I could practically cry just thinking about this because it's so unneeeded. We're as smart as the guys, we're as committed as they are, we probably work harder in certain ways. Women do a lot of unpaid work. And so we have no reason to feel bad about ourselves, but I know when I was a young mom, you're so insecure. What happens though, I think when you get around 35 or 40, you're just like "who cares what people think". You can't even worry about that. As long as you're comfortable, your partner, your conscience, your family, that's what matters."

In this episode Dr. Deborah Gomez Kwolek shares her experience with:
- Having a baby during her intern year in 1987 and how she barely survived that year
- Having to take time away from residency training when she had her 2 first kids
- Sharing a residency spot with another woman who had a baby in residency (she needed to heavily advocate for herself to make this happen)
- Going on to have 7 children
- Taking several years away from medicine midway through her career, and then coming back
- Supporting young moms now that she is more senior

Join the SGIM Women and Medicine Commission's workgroup on parenting

"Pregnancy and Residency- Overdue for Equity" published in NEJM March 11, 2023

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