Making Room for Milk: Breastfeeding, Residency, and Pumping in Between

In this episode the host, Amanda Quijano, sits down with Margot - a family medicine physician and inpatient palliative care doctor who is expecting her third child. The two talk about Margot’s experience having children during medical training, focusing on her journey navigating breastfeeding in residency.

Margot describes choosing residency programs based on their level of support of parenting residents and families, feeling tension between bonding with co-residents and getting home for her baby, and making tradeoffs that increased efficiency but changed opportunities.

Much of the discussion focuses on the logistics and stigma of pumping—finding space, time burdens, and sometimes pumping while working—along with supportive and uncomfortable reactions. Fueled by her own frustrations, Margot helped her program apply for an AAP/AAFP lactation-support collaboration grant - the results of which can be found published here.

The two also talk about the emotional burden, balance, and protectiveness that having a family during such a challenging time such as residency can create, including referencing Margot’s published essay in JAMA (“Mother’s Gold”) that reflects on how parenthood and doctoring - while sometimes can seemingly make each role harder - ultimately felt like then ended up supporting each other throughout her journey.