BONUS: Between Being Both: When a Full-time Mom Becomes a Full-time Parent

In this BONUS bonus episode, the host, Amanda Quijano, revisits an additional portion of last week’s conversation with Breanna, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow, focusing on what it felt like to take a year off medical training to move with her husband, be pregnant, and spend nine months as a full-time mom.

The two discuss the cultural pressure in medicine to justify time off for family, anxiety about not having an “academic purpose,” and the leap of faith of parenting full-time without prior experience. Breanna shares how she built support in a new city, how unexpectedly hard full-time parenting was, and how returning to work simultaneously evoked both guilt and relief.

The conversation focuses on identity shifts, marriage dynamics, and how post-training flexibility makes choices about part-time work both possible and paralyzing.