 In July of 2023, I started my three-year cardiology fellowship, which is notoriously known to be busy. But just two weeks into my fellowship, my life completely changed as my daughter was born. Now I was not only a new cardiology fellow, I was a brand new dad. So here's what I've learned over the past few months about being a new dad and balancing life as a doctor in training. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lax. I'm a board certified internal medicine physician. First, your cardiology fellow. And as you kind of seen from the intro, brand new dad. Well, kind of at this point. So in today's episode, I admit it is not going to be for everyone. I'm going to break down what my life has been like, balancing being a new dad to a wonderful baby girl, as well as trying to balance a hectic life of being a cardiology fellow, thinking about future careers and everything that comes with it. So if you're thinking about possibly having kids in the future, or even if you're curious what it's like being in the training aspect of medicine where you're still in residency of a fellowship, you have a kid and balancing all those obligations, this video is going to be for you. And as an overview of today's episode, I'm going to talk about what life's been like most importantly. So stress levels, sleep levels, time or free time and also talk about kind of the big pearls or takeaways I've had over the past few months. And then finally tips for any new parent or future parent to be in a busy medical career. So let's get into it. So first, let's talk about what life has been like. So my daughter as the making of this video is almost eight months old. So I am an eight month old dad in the same regard. So first and most importantly, people always ask me is are you sleeping or is she sleeping? Let's break that down. I know from experience that other parents have had it significantly worse than my wife and I have had. For most part, we have a well behaved child and we've lucked into that. So for the first two months for life, which were still pretty brutal, she's waking up every two to three hours to feed or have a diaper be changed or just to cry because she was hungry or cold or whatever maybe that was tricky at nighttime of balancing that my wife and I simply just took shifts where she took the first half of the night. She's a night owl and I took the early parts of the morning because I was an early bird and it seemed to work in terms of being able to feed her a changer being available while still getting her rest. And then she quickly transitioned to being able to sleep eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours and now 12 hours. Let's hope that stays for most nights consistently without having to wake up or crying or whatever it may be. In her defense most of time where she has woke up in the middle of the night, she's usually a good reason for it. She's hungry, it's cold, she has to pass some gas and doesn't know how to always kind of made sense. And we were never feeling like we were frustrated at the situation of why is this kid keep waking up? But when we thought that it would be a good transition for her to increase the amount of sleep she was doing, she was able to meet those milestones and thankfully for my wife and I, we were able to get some sleep. So as an overview in terms of how much hours I was actually getting, my first two to three months of having her, we were probably averaging at about five hours of sleep and that was also because my shifts would be starting at seven o'clock or seven thirty, so having to wake up at six or six thirty to make that 30, 40 minute drive that is for me to work while still getting ready and avoiding waking the baby. Now, I would say the average is probably six and a half to seven and a half, just because she's sleeping through the night. So it's more about me getting to bed on time and less about her waking up on time. But in regards to sleep, one thing that's definitely changed is I'm sure it changes for every parent is that your personal schedule will change based off of the sleep schedule of your time. So my daughter will wake up at seven o'clock almost on the dot every single day. And so my wife and I have basically have to create a schedule where we wake up before that ideally so we can shower and have our coffee and just be ready for things like work for me or if I have to do a morning run because I'm training for a half marathon, then those have to be done before she wakes up or we just have to make sure we have an agreement in terms of who will be available for her when it's time to take care of her. So that part's definitely changed. But our bedtime has also moved up because now I'm officially my thirties and we don't stay past 10, 30 or 11 o'clock anymore. Aside from that, I feel like we've lucked out the sleep sector. Again, hasn't been easy, but hasn't been as hard as we were thinking it could have been. I think she's given us a fair shake. Second part is stress level. This is the part that I think helps summarizes. The days are very slow. The months are very fast. My daughter is sitting right now. She rolls all over the place. She talks all the time and that is far cry from the little baby that we brought in. I'm not knowing any idea how to be a parent, how to change her diaper, how to swaddle her, how to comfort her. And now knowing that we kind of have an idea of at least what we're doing, the time has gone so fast. But there's definitely been days where she has been struggling for pain, favors, and you know, respiratory illnesses, gas, and you just have to deal with that fussiness that comes with it throughout the day and then increases your stress level, especially being a cardiology fellow or I don't really have very much downtime during my work hours and then come home and then I have a child who can at some days just need a lot of your attention. That can increase the stress level. But again, I feel like for the most part my wife and I have lucked out. Knock on wood. And then most importantly, my wife and I have just always had a relationship where I think we've always been able to pick the slack up from each other. If you guys are ever interested in kind of meeting her or seeing more about our lives, I've interviewed her way back and early in this channel. I'll link that video with Priya and I. But she's awesome in terms of taking slack when she knows that I have had a busy day or I just fell asleep on the couch because I'm so tired. And the vice versa, I can tell all the days where she is just destroyed because she is home with her daughter right now while I'm at work and I try to do my best to pick up for things like home chores or taking care of her. But I think we have a nice yin and yang and nice seesaw balance in terms of offloading hers. The final part of our stress is that again, I feel like our daughter has given us a fair shake, but we have also made decisions in our lives that have increased our stress level. I decided to do cardiology fellowship knowing that we were expecting her daughter around the same time. That's on me. We decided to buy a new house because we thought we would need a new place to be able to have our growing family. That was true, but having a new house comes with new stress. Going to training also means less of a salary compared to what I was making as a hospital, at least for three years. And so again, new role, financial tightness, not struggle, new role as a parent lack of sleep, the stress level will naturally go higher. But I think we've done our best to skate and maneuver and be ready for obstacles and more are definitely ready to come and she starts to crawl and walk. But I think again, I feel like her daughter and my wife and to me and me to her have given each other the best opportunity of balancing that stress. Now finally and personally for me, the most important is time or lack thereof. The biggest takeaway is that my free time has shrank dramatically and so constrained and then requires me to be very intentional with the time slots that I have, especially when she was waking up every two to three hours to feed, you essentially had her one hour and sometimes now 30 minute naps to do those small bits of tasks around the house, to do things like create a video or write some emails or work on something for fellowship or read a paper that my attending told me to read before I go back to work the next day. But it comes to no surprise because my daughter and my wife come first. And so in the past, even outside of my work, if I was working on a goal, for example, I've run marathons in the past where I've done a lot of training, I trained for a half marathon and just finished a month ago as I'm making this video. If I had a day where I had to go over and run some miles, but my wife was feeling tired and my daughter woke up early or she was just being very fussy, I would just exit that workout. That would be the natural compromise that we'd make, understanding that my family comes first. The most miles don't and sometimes you can make up for it, sometimes you can't. If I sit down in this chair to make a video for you guys and she wakes up and starts to cry, the video has to be stopped and I either pick it up or have to rerecord it later and that's completely okay. I have to be aware that that is a possibility. But now shifting to how time becomes much more intentional, I think my wife and I definitely look at the free time that we have together in terms of how can we make this more productive. So instead of just watching TV endlessly or having TV in the background with our phones and social media, which is a very natural thing especially when you've been together as long as we have to have a relationship that becomes not stagnant, but you're okay with kind of being with each other in silence while you just scroll through social media. Now we make sure that we are much more intentional with that time but if we want to watch a new show together, we're very focused and into it. If we're planning a date night then our phones are away, if we're hanging out with their daughters then ideally we're focused on her. And so that's definitely been the nice part is that time has been something that I valued more and so I've appreciated those small bits of time where I was like okay I'm no longer a parent during this time slot because she's sleeping. And so I'm going to use this time to be a husband, to be a homeowner, to be a cardiology fellow, to be a content creator and when she wakes up I am back to dad mode, back to husband mode. And I've enjoyed myself having these bits and moments of variability instead of feeling like all my free time is gone. Now when I have free time I try to use it to the best of my ability. So next I want to talk about some lessons that I've learned over the past eight months. Again by no means am I dad expert, this is my first kid, I have done tons of things wrong and my wife will probably have a longer list than I do. But I have learned a lot by having a child and going through this transition of being a doctor, being very busy as I'm a cardiology fellow and trying to be the best role model that I can for my daughter. So kind of quickly breaking down some of the lessons that I wrote down. Number one is that balance comes from loving the right role roles. This was actually inspired by a question somebody asked on one of the prior Q&As about being a cardiologist, which is do you feel like you have so much on your plate? Do you get stressed out about balancing your life as a dad, as a husband, as a cardiology fellow, content creator, all the other things that I may do? And my answer to that person is where this kind of piece of advice comes from is that I picked all those roles in my life. I picked to be a dad, I picked to be a husband, I picked to be a dog owner, I picked to be a homeowner, I picked to be a content creator, a doctor, a cardiology fellow because each of those aspects gives me some level of importance in my life. And because of that, I feel more balanced. If I feel like any of these roles left my life, I'd feel a little incomplete. And so yes, the stress level and the lack of time may be associated with them, but I'm balanced because the roles that I have said yes to have been important to me, and thus they are a part of my life. So if you're a parent currently or will be in the future, understand that the roles that you say yes to usually should be the ones that give you the most level of completeness. And that doesn't mean that life will be not chaotic, it probably will be more so, but I have a more sense of balance because those are parts of my life. Number two is that segmentation to be great is so important. I know that chunks of time have to be allocated for different things. My wife usually will sleep till seven or eight o'clock in the morning, depending on when my daughter wakes up. So if I wake up at 4.30 or five o'clock in the morning, that five to seven slot is usually free for me to do whatever I need to. So if I need to get a workout or run in, work on content for you guys, learn new things, that is my time slot of being personally invested. Because when I come home, I cannot with good conscience say, Hey, I know you've been with, you know, our baby all day, I'm going to go to the office and work on X, Y and Z for the channel. Good luck taking care of her. I can't do that in good conscience because she's putting so much hard work of taking care of her throughout the day. It is now my responsibility of offloading her for the rest of the evening. And so the evenings are not free for me to create these videos for you guys, for me to write the emails, for me to be a better cardiology fellow. Evenings for me to be a family man. And so segmentation is understanding that evenings are for me to make amazing experiences and memories with my daughter and my wife and my dog and the rest of my family in the morning slots are really meant for my personal progress because I've segmented them in that fashion. I am again very hyper focused on making sure that when I sit down at his desk at 5 30 in the morning, I may be tired of that cup of coffee, but I need to get work done and YouTube and social media cannot get in my way of, you know, wasting that day. Number three goes without saying that being a parent, you have this unconditional source of motivation and drive. My daughter obviously didn't choose to come into this world. We chose to have her. And because of that, she is deserving of every aspect of attention and love that she can get for myself, my wife and the rest of our family. And so knowing that I also understand that I am going to be a role model for her right now as well the rest of her life. So the decisions that I make and the decisions that I fail to make are all representation of what I'm setting up for her. And knowing that there is such a level of motivation and drive to make sure that every aspect of my life, being a cardiology fellow, being a dad, being a content creator, if I'm going to show up, I might as well be freaking good at it, at least be semi halfway decent or better. My average getting a little bit better, you guys get the idea. There is a little human who can barely talk babbles a lot. He's learning to sit who looks at me as her source of support protection. And that is hopefully going to continue to be the case for the rest of our life. And knowing that, I know again that all those roles that I take on, I have to do them to the best of my ability. Number four, and we kind of alluded to this as small moments are all that matter. Again, I may not have the biggest chunks of time, but if I'm going to be invested in those times, I need to make sure that I am fully attentive to them. Number five, and this is something I have inspired myself more and more to do is that it's important to dream big both for yourself and for your kids. I know that this is the time in my training as a doctor that I should go for the biggest accolades, the biggest goals and ambitions as possible, because ideally the output myself in a better position as well as my family and my life for my daughter. So if I choose to go ahead and just kind of half-ass everything where I get a decent enough job, I'm decently enough happy with I have decent enough health doesn't do her any good. I want to have the best health, the best mental clarity, the best role, best job, be the best cardiologist I could possibly be so I can provide for myself kind of be in the best mental state for myself and then definitely for my wife, my daughter going forward. Now those are my lessons, but now I want to talk about tips for again any active parents that are out there that are going through this journey or will be pretty soon or maybe you are expecting yourself to have kids at some point in your training, here are some of the tips I would give you. Number one is that together doesn't always mean equally. My wife and I will take a variety of roles but that doesn't mean each of us is doing the same amount every single day. There are some times where I'm doing more than my wife because she has taken so much or she's tired and vice versa. There are times I may come from a busy ICU shift and I have no energy to do the dishes, to clean, to vacuum, to do laundry or even like change the diapers for the baby because I'm like just falling asleep as I'm getting home. My wife understands that and I think again we've been able to ying and yang and understand when we need to pick up the slack for the other person. So we're doing things together but that doesn't mean that I'm expecting my partner to always be doing the same amount that I'm doing and vice versa. Number two is to make sure to care for yourself to show up 100%. Again if your health is not the most optimal that it could be, if your diet's not amazing, if your sleep's not great, if your stress levels are too high, then when you do show up for your family you're kind of not the best version of yourself and that's not fair to them, it's not fair to you. So always ask yourself how optimized you are in your self-care. Maybe thinking about time slots like I talked about where you can just have your own protective time whether that's late in the evenings or early in the mornings that are dedicated for you to make sure you're progressing. Number three is that routines help most problems. If there's anything a baby likes it's routine. So there's a time that she wakes up, time that she goes to sleep, time that she takes for naps and knowing that I can now make my own routines of saying well before this time slot she likely won't wake up, this is when I'm going to get my workout in, this is when I'm going to record my videos on the week, this is when I'm going to go for my long runs, this is when we're going to have date night with my wife and I. Knowing that again helps the rest of the week, the rest of the day become a lot simpler. Number four is that everything is a phase and baby term there's always a parent that comes up to you like just wait till they do x, y, and z. I frankly hate those parents because it doesn't make sense for me to scare somebody who's going to go through that experience. There is going to be a time where your baby won't sleep as well as they were doing in the past and somebody's going to tell you just wait till this happens or wait till they're walking or wait till they're talking or saying no. Like I'm going to enjoy my baby for what it is right now but it does remind me that just like how babies go through various phases and their attitude, their personality, their temperament, and their sleep the same thing is for you. So if you're going through a tough patch where your child's not sleeping or you're not sleeping or just life is too hard, understand that as long as you're asking how you can make it better, if you can't then often it's just a phase and you'll get through it just like anything else. And then finally no one knows what they're doing. I know for a fact that my parenting has been through experimentation and my daughter has been the best subject possible of being okay with being experimented on in terms of how dad changes the diapers, how dad jokes with her, how dad plays with her, and now I know through experimentation experience how to change a diaper, how to spot a like a pro, which it took me about a week or two, and it most importantly had to be present as a dad. And so if you're nervous while on your medical training of being a present parent or being aware and knowledgeable enough to know what to do, you're likely still going to screw up and that is completely okay. I think it's safe to say for most kids that need a parent who is available aware, attentive, and loving and that doesn't mean that you have to be perfect all the time. So if you are tending to make the right moves most of time, then your kids will be just fine. That overall summarizes my experience of again being a new dad, being a new cardiology fellow, I've absolutely loved the journey. I can't remember my life look like or I can't but don't necessarily crave what my life was like before having her because my life has been incredibly intensively more happier, again more chaotic, more busy, definitely more stressful, but I'm happy. And so I'm excited to see what life looks like forward as I go through my training as she gets older, she hits new milestones, starts walking and talking and allows us to have more experiences with her and cardiology fellowship will ideally get easier and less stressful. And then I'll be in attending where ideally my hours won't be as intensive and I'll be able to hang out with my daughters and ideally future kids at the same time. So hopefully this breakdown was helpful guys. If you did find it helpful, go ahead and let me know in the comment section down below what you guys enjoyed, what kind of questions you want me to answer in the future about being a dad possibly. If you did enjoy this episode, you're watching on YouTube, please hit that like button. It really helps support the channel, helps me get in front of more people who may want to succeed on the medical journey. Hopefully all of you guys do. And if you haven't so already hit that subscribe button notification bell, you're listening on a podcast, subscribe and follow on your favorite listing platform. And if you need help on your medical journey and just want the A to Z blueprint, go ahead and look at the description down below. One of the things I recommend the most is a med school blueprint, which is my full guide of things that I did correctly and things that did not do well that I wish somebody just says here is what you need to know to succeed on all the phases of studying productivity, step one, step two, clinical rotations and so forth. Just check out the hundreds of reviews. If you're interested in trying the program out for yourself, if you're interested in any of your free and paid programs, I'll link those down below as well. But as always, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours. If you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and check out this episode right here as my life as a cardiology fellow. And this is the most popular video that we have here on the channel of how I studied in medical school using a tool like Onky. But as always, my friends, thank you so much for joining me on this video. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.