Beyond the White Coat: Parenthood in the Medical Field

Season 3, Episode 4

In celebration of Parents Day on July 28th, Child Psychiatrist Dr. Linda Drozdowicz joins Laurel Road’s Cassandra Hume for a wide-ranging conversation on the challenges of balancing parenthood with a career in medicine. Listen for Dr. Drozdowicz’s expert advice on childcare, time management, financial considerations, and more.

Transcript

Eric Sutton [00:00:08] Hi everyone. This is Eric and you’re listening to Financing Ambition, a Laurel Road podcast.

In celebration of Parents Day on July 28^th, today’s episode will be guest hosted by Cassandra Hume, Laurel Road’s Senior Content Manager and new mom to an adorable one year old baby boy. Thanks for tuning in and Happy Parents Day to all moms and dads!

Cassandra Hume [00:00:38] Hi everyone! This is Cassandra and today’s episode of Financing Edition is for all the moms and dads who are balancing parenthood with a career, especially if that career is the uniquely demanding field of medicine. And who better to join us for discussion about all things parenting and medical career than a child psychiatrist? Doctor Linda Drozdowicz, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:01:00] Thanks for having me.

Cassandra Hume [00:01:02] Okay, let’s jump right in with a quick introduction for our listeners. Can you tell us where you’re based a little bit about your career and your background?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:01:09] Absolutely. So, I currently live in Darien, Connecticut. I have my private practice here, and that’s what I do most of my time. And I also do a little bit of work through Yale, where I’m on faculty at the Child Study Center, doing consultation to a children’s hospital. I was born in New York. Raised in Connecticut. I went over to Minnesota for medical school at the Mayo Clinic. Moved to New York City for my psychiatry residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, and then completed my training with the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at Yale. And during all that time, I also got married and had two kids.

Cassandra Hume [00:01:48] Amazing. Thank you for sharing a little bit more about yourself. I know I’m looking forward to today’s discussion as a new mom of a one-year-old. So as parents, there’s a constant barrage of questions and new challenges that seem to just change daily with every milestone. So, we’re looking forward to hearing your particular expertise. And selfishly, I’ll be taking my own notes. So, I know the last time we saw you, you were expecting your second. So how old are your kids now?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:02:12] So I’ve got a six-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old now.

Cassandra Hume [00:02:16] Nice, nice. So, I’m curious. Did you always know that you wanted to specialize in child psychiatry? Or was that something that you decided to pursue during medical school?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:02:26] Nope. So, I had no exposure to psychiatry before medical school. I thought I was going to do pediatric. So, I did like kids. But on the first day of medical school at Mayo, they gave us some little survey to see what specialties might be best for us. And before I took the survey, you know, I said, I don’t know what I want to do, but I know it’s not going to be radiology because I don’t want to sit in the dark. And I know it’s not going to be psychiatry. But during my first year at Mayo, I did do a rotation on the child psychiatry unit just for a week, and I fell in love with it. I had never seen anything like it. I was resistant to choosing psychiatry. It was just so far from what I thought I would do. And so, I waited until the very end of all of my clinical rotations to make that final decision. I wanted to make sure there was nothing else I could possibly like, and in the end, nothing compared. I just, you know, in child psychiatry, I always passed the clock test, which is that I never looked at the clock during the day. The time just flew. So, I knew it was what I wanted.

Cassandra Hume [00:03:25] So you decided a little bit later on. That’s good to know. So given your specialty, how would you say that being a child psychiatrist has influenced your parenting style? Do you think that it made it easier or more challenging because you had so much expertise in the field?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:03:39] I get this question all the time, and most people assume that I’m a much more anxious parent because of what I know. I have found the opposite. I mean, I can’t separate being a child psychiatrist from being a parent because of my knowledge base, but I’m not my children’s psychiatrist. But what I learned in all of these training, which for me was, you know, the four years of medical school and then six years of residency and fellowship is that kids are resilient and flexible and basically nothing matters, but in a good way. There are a thousand adequate ways to raise children. There’s a couple of things not to do. Big things like abuse. Right? The, the obvious things. But other than that, if you love your children and try even if you come up short, some of the time they do well. So, becoming a child psychiatrist made me way more relaxed as a parent because I realized, you know, almost anything goes. And if you follow your kid’s cues, they’ll do just fine, or you certainly won’t be the cause of any trouble they have.

Cassandra Hume [00:04:40] I love to hear all that. Definitely reassuring. And I totally agree that the, the flexibility. Right. And that that patience are key. So, you just shared a little bit about your education, in the years of training, it takes a specialize in your field, very demanding as a time commitment for sure. So, would you say that that impacted your decision on when to start your family and what challenges did you face in that regard?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:05:02] Yeah. So, it the length of the training and the details of the training made it so that I did my best to have surgical timing of my pregnancies, which, as we all know, you actually can’t control for that stuff. But I did my best. So, I did choose to wait to try to get pregnant until my fourth year of adult psychiatry residency. And on that note, when you become a child psychiatrist, you have the option to skip your fourth year of adult residency and go straight to fellowship. I chose not to do that because I wanted to have a year to try to get pregnant and not to be on call. It’s just an easier year since the for the first year of child fellowship is very, very busy. So, for me, it did lengthen my training in that way. I was lucky to get pregnant pretty easily, which I know a lot of physician moms are not. But. So, it worked out okay for me. And I waited to try for a second child until I was done with fellowship. And thankfully, I was able to do that age wise.

Cassandra Hume [00:06:02] Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Definitely helpful. For our doctors and listeners who are early in their medical careers and also want to become parents. And of course, this is the Financing Ambition podcast, so we should talk about the fact that on top of being a big-time commitment, becoming a doctor is also a big financial commitment, according to the AMA. Psychiatry has one of the highest median student loan debt specialties, with a median debt of 190,027% of psychiatrists have $200,000 or more in student loan debt. So, if you’re comfortable, can you talk a little bit about how you personally manage those financial challenges that come with balancing a medical career with family life? Let’s start with your student loan debt specifically, how has that factored in with you?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:06:45] Yeah, so I came out with less than the average student loan debt. I was very lucky to have a family that gave me wise advice, starting before I chose a college. And they advised me to follow the money, basically because I knew I was going to go to graduate school, and they said, no one will care where you go to college. So, at the time, I was feeling, you know, salty about it as a teenager, but I turned down an Ivy League university for college to go to the University of Connecticut with a big scholarship. So, I came out of college with almost no debt. And that was a I’m thankful every day that my family pushed me in that direction. And I always advise teenagers that I work with in my practice to consider money in these decisions, because it really can make a difference. And then when I was picking medical school, similarly, I had a lot of wonderful options. But I happen to like my own medical school, and I found out that they had the lowest student debt in the country at that time. And I chose to go to Mayo. And sure enough, I got a number of scholarships while I was at Mayo. We all did. And I came out with about $125,000 of debt, between living expenses and tuition after the four years. It weighed on me. My psychology is that I hate debt, I found out, but I didn’t know any better. So, when I went to residency, I went into forbearance. I just said, you know, I’m living in New York City. I cannot afford to make payments. So, my loans were accruing quite a bit of interest during that time. I didn’t know about the pay as you go or pay as you earn or, you know, now they have better programs. But I did forbearance during that time. And about halfway through residency, once I started moonlighting is when I. I started making payments on my debt.

Cassandra Hume [00:08:27] Great. Yeah. No, that’s really great advice. And it’s great that you were able to take advantage of that option to help balance with your family and start chipping away at that student loan debt.

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:08:38] Yeah, it was I actually. I’ll jump in and say I found moonlighting almost intoxicating once I started doing it from a financial perspective. You know, I come from a middle class, upper middle-class background. I never, thankfully, had to worry about, you know, my next meal or any needs and a lot of wants. But I certainly didn’t feel like I was, you know, rolling in dough growing up. And I found with moonlighting that I could go and work in overnight or go and work a 24-hour shift and just manifest an amount of money I had never seen all in one check before. And so, I ended up with four moonlighting jobs by the end of residency. I had some hospital jobs. I had a clinic job. And that was in New York City, where there’s more psychiatrist per capita, you know, probably than anywhere else. But there was always a need for a psychiatrist. And if you’re willing to work a tough job, they’re always tough. And if you’re willing to work at night without violating duty hours, you can make a lot of money. So, I was able to make student loan payments from that money. I usually would put aside money for taxes and then divide what was left between needs, and then some wants for myself, so that I wouldn’t feel bad about suffering so badly on those shifts. And by the time I was a fellow when I had a child needing daycare, which was, you know, more than $2,000 a month for daycare, I would go and work a 24-hour shift at least once a month, moonlighting to pay for that daycare, and it took care of it.

Cassandra Hume [00:10:04] Wow. Incredible, incredible. And I’m glad that you brought up the cost of daycare, which is a very real expense. A recent survey by BMJ found that daycare was one of the top concerns for a number of doctors, even commenting that the cost of daycare was bigger than their mortgage. Another major concern the doctors expressed in that same survey was finding suitable childcare for their work schedule. In fact, nine out of ten respondents said that they struggled to find care that covered the length of their workday. So, when you were looking into childcare, would you say that that was a challenge as well?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:10:36] It’s a nightmare. I mean, it’s a nightmare. And if and if I could redesign the system, then hospitals would have daycares and adequate spots for any resident physician, because our hours are unique, and they don’t make a lot of money. And anyway, it’s awful. I had to rely on a combination of help from family and daycare and, you know, friends to make it work during that time.

Cassandra Hume [00:11:01] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely a challenge. So, you’ve mentioned moonlighting, you know, that was helping both for that cost of daycare and student loans. Would you say that you had like a very specific budget during that time, or was there another financial strategy that you felt like help to help tackle both those expenses and your student loans?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:11:20] I did, so I never had a budget before residency. And then I got into it. I got some of the budgeting apps and I have kept a budget ever since. A lot of people think that budgets are stressful. I found it to be such a stress reliever financially because everything was included in mystery anymore. I just knew what I had, what was coming in, what was going out, what I actually needed to worry about versus not. And it just helped me feel in control and able to meet goals while also not totally suffering all the time. You know, I live like a resident, but not like a totally miserable one. You know, during residency, during fellowship, and for a couple of years after residency and fellowship to pay off my loans. But the budget was a game changer and continues to be.

Cassandra Hume [00:12:05] That’s great. Yeah. That’s such a great reminder that, you know, a simple budgeting tool and what a difference that can make. So, it’s great that you were able to find that during training. I know we’ve definitely talking to talk to some of our other doctor guests about how they manage their medical school debt during training, and that some of them had also accrued a significant amount of interest by going into forbearance. And refinancing had helped them, as it did for you.

So, circling back to the time commitment aspect, because you mentioned that having multiple moonlighting opportunities was really helpful during training and you were also becoming a new mom. And that’s a lot. So, I know there’s never enough time. How would you say that you were able to manage at all?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:12:44] So when I was in medical school, we got a lecture, by some wonderful doctors, about being a parent in medicine. And the first and most important thing they stressed is to outsource as much as possible, because your time is worth more than your money, basically, that you want to have enough money to get by on. But that anything beyond that, we should not hesitate to spend it in order to buy back our time. So, the first thing I did after I got my first moonlighting job, it was internal moonlighting at Mount Sinai as a Y2. I was able to moonlight in neurology as a psychiatry resident. I immediately got a cleaning service to come once a month and clean my apartment and oh my God, was it life changing. But my state of mind improves so much by having this wonderful team come in and make the apartment sparkling every so often. And it was, you know, I remember at the time it was $60 and it felt like a splurge. But, you know, I would make the money moonlighting and then I could afford that and then some. Once I became an attending, things got even harder. I had two children running a private practice, working an academic job on the learning curve of being a new attending and all that. And while cooking has always been one of my favorite things, I love to cook. I eventually realized that if I was going to be a child psychiatrist, which our work takes place in the after-school hours for the most part, and into the early evening, that’s when children are available. I would get home at night, and it was just a scramble. It was so stressful to try to make some dinner, get it on the table, see my kids for a second before bedtime. I started to hate it, and so I hired a wonderful grandmother who comes to our house four nights a week during the week and makes dinner, tidies up, gets any groceries I need. I hired help, and I think back to that lecture that we got because it is so easy to start to feel guilty or blame yourself for not doing it all. We can’t do it all. And now I get to come home from work, take a deep breath, sit on the couch and read a book to my kids and enjoy myself. And there’s food waiting. And that is worth its weight in gold. It’s worth much more than I pay to make that happen. So do not hesitate to outsource with any extra funds. You have to basically buy back your sanity and well-being.

Cassandra Hume [00:14:59] Yes. Thank you. That is definitely great advice for some time saving tips. Any other resources that you felt like really helped you?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:15:07] Another resource that I recommend for any parent in medicine is, you know, community groups. So, for me, there are these physician groups on Facebook which whatever you think about Facebook, it is crowdsourcing by tens of thousands of physicians on everything, you know, great for diagnostic questions, but also great for questions such as, how are you handling day care as a resident? What do you do in private practice? What kind of helped you guys get? I have found those groups to be so amazing, and I’ll never forget that. I saw one post by a physician mom, you know, feeling very guilty because she couldn’t go to her, you know, second graders, 1 pm school event or something. And this crowd, it seemed, of older physician mothers in the same group wrote back and said, don’t you confuse what your little kid is saying to you for what they will know about you when they’re older. And they said that, you know, our whatever high school graduates, college graduates have written to us, have told us how they see what we did, and they think it is so amazing what we sacrificed and what we balanced, and we are so close with them. You know, I still get chills thinking about it that the, the, our tendency to feel guilty is so strong. But if you are working hard and doing the right thing for you and your family, whether or not your eight-year-old knows it right now, they’re going to know it when they’re 18 or 25. And they, you know, it’s you’re not hurting them. You’re not hurting them. You’re taking care of yourself and your family.

Cassandra Hume [00:16:41] Yeah. That’s such a great reminder. I totally agree that community is just so important and connecting with other parents. I know I had no idea how much I needed other parents and just that perspective that they would have until after my son came along. So anyway, you can get that extra help. So, if you had to summarize it, what do you think would be the biggest difference? We’ve talked some about it for doctors managing parenthood versus other career paths. And, and what would you tell early doctors about that balance of parenthood in a medical career?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:17:08] I think the hardest thing for physicians is that we tend to be very independent, kind of, you know, obsessional for the most part, people, we like to be on top of things, and we have our to do list and we check our boxes. And the hardest thing for us tends to be how much help you need when you become a parent. You just cannot physically do it all. So, moonlight if you need to. If it makes your financial life healthier, it’s worthwhile. It will relieve stress. It’s a way to buy back your time. If you are able to moonlight at your program, it makes a big difference at the beginning. You don’t have to do it forever. You know, I moonlighted for years. Multiple jobs I don’t anymore because I don’t need to. But I always love having the option. If I wanted to go back and just pull a couple shifts and make cash really quickly. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you can do it all. Hire every ounce of help that you need to get you through. Do not feel bad. Your time is worth more than the money right now, and you’ll never regret having spent more time with your family and with yourself.

Cassandra Hume [00:18:07] That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. That sounds like great advice for doctors to remember early on, especially. So, you know, speaking of that balance and mental health. What would you say that doctors or parents and all of us really, that are parents should know about mental health at different stages of parenthood?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:18:27] The biggest thing we teach parents in child psychiatry is that it is normal to have the full range of emotions towards your baby toddler, child. Parents tend to get really guilty when they have negative feelings about their child. It’s normal. You know, if you’re feeling so down that you never like your child, you know, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD are incredibly common. So don’t hesitate to ask for help. But if it’s not that bad and you’re just going through a range of emotions, just be aware that it’s normal sometimes to be mad at your kid or, you know, resentful of the sleep you’re not getting or things like that.

Tag team as much as you can with your village. Whoever is helping you raise this child, whoever you can rely on. Don’t hesitate to take the space that you need when you can. Raising a kid is one of the most physically and emotionally and financially taxing things you’ll ever do. But it is also the most rewarding. And, you know, it’s that’s one of those cliches about parenting that I didn’t understand until I was holding my baby that that, you know, just, a friend of mine said, you know, when you have a baby, your wallet gets cut in half, but your heart doubles in size. And I really feel that that’s true.

If you’re, again, if you’re struggling to connect with a baby that you have, it doesn’t mean that you’re broken or bad. You need to get some help. Talk to your O.B., talk to your primary care person. You need to get into therapy, or maybe see a psychiatrist to help you because it’s not your fault. And that is very, very common. There’s nothing like insane sleep deprivation, having no schedule, and having no money to make things hard. So, it’s not an unusual time for people to struggle. And having a baby can bring up emotions that you don’t even recognize. There’s a famous essay in child psychiatry called ghosts in the nursery about all this stuff from your own early childhood, like before the years before you even have conscious memory. All that stuff can come out when you have a new baby, and it can scare you. It can feel unfamiliar and unpleasant. So again, don’t hesitate to ask for help. No one’s going to think you’re evil. And you know, people like me and all our therapy colleagues, we are here to help, help you feel good and be the best parent you can. It’s the greatest gift you can give yourself and your child.

Cassandra Hume [00:20:34] Definitely, definitely relate to that. It is, as you said, a constant roller coaster no matter what people try to tell you. So those are definitely great reminders for all the parents out there to keep it in perspective. So, Doctor Drozdowicz, we’ve definitely covered a lot of ground today. And before you go and we close out this episode, do you have any other last pieces of advice that you would like to tell parents?

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:20:56] Yeah, I’ll repeat my statement from before. Remember that for the most part, nothing matters that much. You know, the big stuff matters. Love your baby. Try your best. But whether you, you know, breastfeed them or give them formula or do organic or send them to Montessori or have a grandma taking care of them, or a nanny or five babysitters or like kids do, well, do your very best to go with the flow. Babies don’t, quote unquote read the manual. But they tell you what they need. And they say if you have raised one child, you have raised one child. So, remember that every baby is different, and it’s best to think of them as coming through you and not from you. One of the most common struggles that parents go through is feeling that their baby is not doing the things that they would want the baby to do. But if you can just embrace who your child is, even if it’s the polar opposite of who you are, you can have a warm and loving and helpful relationship with that child. Your job is just to make sure they are the best version of who they were born to be. Also, remember that kids pick up all of their cues from you, the parent. So, what we know is that if you act reassuring to your child and say that things are okay and act like things are okay, even if you’re stressed out, that’s going to help them. And that applies here in that, you know, resident physicians who become parents are often so guilty and so guilty about dropping their kid at daycare or dropping their kid with the nanny. If your kid realizes that you think that that’s a problem, they’re going to be stressed. Instead, celebrate. Oh my God, there’s these other adults in my child’s life who love them and care for them. Then your kid is going to think, oh my God, how wonderful. There are all these adults in my life who love me and care for me. So, remember, they’re picking up the cues from you and it’s okay to be stressed. But, you know, discuss it with your circle. But, you know, you tell your kid that stuff is good, okay? And that’ll help them do well. And most of all, remember that the love is the most important thing. Your child needs love. It’s typically very easy to give unless you are suffering from depression or other conditions, which you should get help for. And they will do well if you love them well. Also, for those of us who are busy, which is all of us, remember that almost anything can be made special or magical for a child. Again, they take their cues from you. I have a busy private practice, and typically on Saturday mornings I need to go into the office to catch up on documentation. So, my six-year-old loves to come to the office, and when he comes with me, he gets a special snack and he plays with the toys I have in my office while I document. And to him, that’s a special time together. And to me, it’s a special time together. And also, I’m getting my notes done. So, remember that you can sort of frame things for your kid. They really don’t know any better. And you can make them feel that they are special. And because they are and you love them and do what you need to do to balance everything, you’re balancing.

Cassandra Hume [00:23:56] Awesome. Yes. I couldn’t agree more. They definitely don’t read those manuals. And no matter how many we read, kids still seem to take their own parts though. But it’s pretty, pretty amazing to watch. So, I appreciate the advice. I will be relistening again. And I think that’s a pretty wonderful message to close out our conversation. So, Doctor Drozdowicz, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and so many great insights with us today. We’re really grateful that you were able to share both your personal experience and your professional expertise on the topic. So, thank you again for joining us and Happy Parents Day to you as well.

Dr. Linda Drozdowicz [00:24:30] It’s my pleasure and thank you.

Cassandra Hume [00:24:33] And as always, thanks to our listeners for joining us. For more information about Laura Road, visit laura.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And stay tuned for the next episode of Financing Admission.

Episode References

• https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240214/Doctors-struggling-to-balance-medical-career-and-parenthood.aspx
• https://www.ama-assn.org/medical-students/specialty-profiles/top-5-medical-specialties-highest-student-loan-debts

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This podcast is produced for information purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation of any product. Any views, opinions, findings and conclusions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of Laurel Road or its affiliates. Laurel Road, KeyBank and its affiliates are not providing any financial, economic, legal, accounting or tax advice or recommendations in this podcast. The information contained in this recording may not be current, and Laurel Road has no obligation to provide any updates or changes. Neither Laurel Road nor any of its affiliates makes any representation or warranty, of any kind, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this podcast and expressly disclaims any and all liabilities around such.

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