Days and nights on call

Being oncall as an Obstetrician and Gynecologist is a unique experience.  Anything can happen, from perfectly normal women having perfectly normal pregnancies going on to have perfectly normal deliveries...to life-threatening emergencies where life-saving decisions need to be made.  Luckily, most of what goes on tends more toward the "normal" categories.  Having had three pregnancies and deliveries myself, and having been at this job for many years now, it gets easier to deal with whatever may come.  Also luckily, I am a "list" person----I have a constant list in my head when dealing with on call activity----a list of all the things that ARE happening, and all the things that COULD happen, and what I should be doing about it, in order of liklihood and priority.  I find that a LOT of my time is spent teaching and explaining to patients and families what can happen, what our plans are, and how the bast of plans may change drastically through the process.  Labor and childbirth can be a scary thing, and explaining things can really help the situation and lessen the anxiety.  One of the things that has been harder as I have gotten older, though, is the loss of good sleep and what that can do to me.  I was a resident in the days where we were still allowed to work 80 hour weeks, stay up all night, and then see a whole clinic-full of patients the next day. (And RIGHT after I was finished with residency, those rules changed---for the better--quite a bit!)  I used to lose sleep and bounce back right away.  Now, the "bounce" is not so immediate.  This past week, I had not had a good night's sleep for 4 or 5 nights in a row....and by the last day I felt like death.  The only other time in life I can equate this to is when you have a newborn baby in the house---especially if you are exclusively breastfeeding......the extreme exhaustion that accompanies waking every two hours to feed the baby, and never REALLY getting the restful, REM sleep that you need....With a new baby that goes on and on. In my opinion, the baby thing got me ready for being an on call doctor, and being oncall got me ready for having a new baby.  I had the pleasure of both of those experiences, since I had two babies BEFORE residency, and one baby AFTER.  More on THOSE stories later.