Hi everyone,
I just found out that I'm pregnant with our 2nd child, I'm due at the end of September and will be in my 2nd year of residency. Just wanted to find out how long of a maternity leave others have taken. My son will be 21 months old when the baby is born and I was thinking about taking 2-3 months, using 1 month vacation and then 1 or 2 electives if I can work it out. If anyone used elective time as maternity leave, what kind of electives did you do? I'm in pediatrics and I know that they do reading elective or other things like that. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!!

I created a two-week elective called "Human Lactation" for students and residents in the programs where I used to teach. I passed the preceptorship on to another doc who has also since left and last I heard it is now called "Infant feeding". I don't even want to know what the curriculum is now. at the time, it consisted of a lot of readings, some time spent with the hospital lactation consultant, and attending the health department and hospital breastfeeding classes.
If your program doesn't offer something like that, maybe you could get together with one of the docs and the local lactation consultant and create something.

I did a 4 week research project and 2 week online pharmacology elective, and took 2 weeks vacation.

Human Lactation elective - brilliant!

Well during one of my maternity leaves I read everything I could about lactation (usually I was holding big textbooks and reading while I was nursing - I guess reading about the science of lactation helped my let down!). This was because I was taught NOTHING about human lactation during either medical school or residency. AnnaM, your elective sounds like a great idea! Now I am far more knowledgeable about lactation than any of my partners, I use this knowledge everyday at work. And of course, personal experience does not hurt either...

Thanks for the information. I am planning on using my 4 week vacation time and 4 weeks of an elective, and some of my sick time, but not all of it. I'm going to work with my residency director to develop the lactation elective or parenting elective, I will just need to talk to the lactation consultant about the reading material.

I'd love to hear about what you put together on lactation, if you get a chance...!