Hello!

I will be starting medical school in the fall and would love to get some ideas on childcare. Is it unrealistic to have a nanny that will work 40 hours/week (i.e., will I need more)? Maybe I need a combination of daycare + nanny? How about the weekends? What do you do about childcare on the weekends? I'm assuming you still have to spend half of your weekend studying?

Would love to hear what student moms out there do so that I can investigate options in my area. Thanks so much in advance!

How much sleep do you need? Are you married or is dad involved? Do you have other support? How old are you kids (ie. how much do they sleep)? I would say 40 hours is fine, as long as you can study late at night after putting kids to sleep. I never studied much on weekends outside of naptime, even before block exams, but I pulled a lot of all-nighters.

This is only for first two years of course. You'll need more hours (including overnights and weekends) as a third year and beyond. Good luck!

Here are some more details that I hope are helpful!

I'm married. Husband is very supportive of me pursuing this. He is great with the baby and will definitely help out but I don't expect him to take over the majority of the care-taking since he has a demanding career. My kid will be 11 months when I start school.

I have a family network but no one who is going to commit to helping out regularly so I will need to do daycare and or nanny/babysitter.

I need around 6 hours of sleep to function OK. I can definitely pull all-nighters but not for many in a row.

Baby Einstein, thanks so much for your reply. What was your "typical" day like with studying and making time for your kid(s)?

Medical school is very demanding. More so than any "demanding career" I can think of. This is a huge red flag for me.

I am a third-year medical student, and the only way I survive well and spend time with my child is for my husband to do 97% of the childcare with me studying and playing with our child for my free time. I have a 14 month-old currently.

Maybe other schools have more free time. You also may be smarter than me and require less studying. Who knows. If your husband's career is going to take precedence over you being a medical student - I don't see this working well for you.

My husband stays at home with our child, and we both put my medical education first, as it will be the sustenance for our family. He is a mechanical engineer by education/former practice, but we are very happy with this decision. Some days it is extremely hard, but we make it work.

PS - I'm very opinionated, and we have piles of undone laundry right now, and our house is never orderly. Feel free to not listen to my opinion.

My husband and I were med students together, but we didn't have kids until 3rd year. We had significant help from my parents in the form of overnight sitting when we had simultaneous call (occasionally) or if we both had to be in godawful early (often). We used a daycare with extended hours (6 am to 8pm) during med school. First 2 years is likely to be fine with just daycare, but you do have to schedule in studying. Some moms on here have mentioned they treat it like a job... they go to class, then stay at school studying until 5-5:30 or whatever, then go home and be mom. That sounds reasonable, too, depending on your courses.
Residency was a much bigger deal, involving a combination of daycare, sitters, and rare family help (since we moved away). We required care for about 60-70 hours per week, every week, and sometimes more. You can make it work regardless, you just need to spend the weeks before school starts figuring out a good system, and then be prepared to adjust when necessary. If your spouse makes good money, then I highly reccomend outsourcing all noncritical tasks... lawn care, cleaning, etc. Good luck!

My husband and I are both residents now and had our son during fourth year. I can't really comment on medical school since fourth year is so easy and we didn't really need much help, but it is really really hard both being interns and having a baby. We had so many early mornings- my poor mother in law sometimes got our son between 4 and 4:30am (I was on surgery and my husband overnight so didn't get home until around 8am). In terms of total number of hours we use outside the home care, which for us includes daycare and family help, I'd say it's probably about 60 hours per week. My husband is a medicine resident and drops our son off around 630 or 7, and I'm anesthesia so I often can pick him up by 5 or 5:30. Usually one of us is home on either weekend day. I also get lovely post call days where I slept a good part of the night and pick my son up early for a fun day

So, it depends. It's not easy, and probably 40 hours is not enough, depending on what your husband does and how flexible he can be.

I think full-time daycare is enough. You should have (at most) 8-5 hours, and your baby will presumably go to sleep early (8pm at latest) after which you can study. So even if you're alone taking care of your child then, it's not much study time lost (and it's time you'll want with baby anyway!). If you have family around, can they help babysit here and there at crunch time? Can you afford hired help for household stuff?

3rd year and residency, you will need more help as others have described.

Hi! Just wanted to chime in. I think during 1st and 2nd year when it's all classroom-based, having daycare from 8-5 will work out fine. If your husband is willing to do full time childcare on weekends, you can study then -- and will likely need to for some exams. During 3rd year, is your husband able to restrict his work hours to 40-50 hours per week? If so, then full-time day care may work out then as well, provided he is willing to be the full-time parent outside of business hours. If not, you may need additional help from babysitters or family. My husband and I were both 3rd year medical students together with a young child, so our schedule looked something like this:

5 am - I wake up, get ready (baby still asleep).
6 am - first nanny arrives, I leave for the hospital.
4 pm - first nanny leaves, second nanny arrives
6:30 pm - one parent returns home from school to relieve nanny 2, does bath, dinner, put kid in bed.
7:30 pm - kid is in bed, husband and I have dinner and visit.
8:00 pm-10 pm - we both study.
10:30 pm - asleep.

We managed to not both be on call overnight together, but when we were a couple times, a nanny stayed overnight. When we worked on weekends, we would have our second nanny (who we called the night and weekends nanny) stay with our child. When we were not working weekends, she would still come to our house part-time on weekends (9 am - 3 pm both days) so we could study for shelf exams, because there was no time during the week to study. All days off were study days so we could pass our exams (yes, I mean pass literally, not get all honors).

Nannies are also very expensive. If your husband has an income though, you might be able to afford it more easily than we did. And if he's willing to be a primary parent on nights and weekends, you won't need paid help then. I understand a "demanding career" too, but I agree with others on the board who have said there is no career as demanding as medical school. There simply isn't. Working 80 hrs per week and then studying on top of that (for a total of a 100 hour workweek) was unthinkable for me before I came to medical school. But it quickly becomes your life.

Good luck and if you need more info about nannies feel free to PM me.

I think you also have to consider what specialty you are hoping to go into. If you want something that is very competitive, you will have to spend more time studying so that you can get great grades and scores.

This has been our schedule for the last 4 weeks and for the next 2 while I"m on my family medicine rotation:

I drop off at 7:45 and am at clinic by 8:30-8:45a (we don't see pts until 9am). DH picks up at 5pm.

My schedule is about 9-5p with an hour each way alloted for drive time. DH has morning classes but studies in the afternoon.

This will change probably when I start OB mid-Feb for 6 weeks. After that I have peds and psych. It will probably go back to this for psych but peds is hit or miss.

As an MSII, it was possible for me to get by with 9-10 hours of daycare 2-3 days a week (Tues and Thurs I didn't need to go onto campus). Now (MSIII) I work anywhere from 8-13 hours a day. I do much less studying on the weekends, and would not require daycare (my husband is also home).