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Many women successfully combine career and motherhood. We pursue professions we worked hard to earn and defend, and they matter to us every bit as much as they do to our male colleagues. Yet motherhood often carries an invisible burden that is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't lived it.

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The hours spent away from our children, especially when they are very young, can weigh heavily on our hearts. Fathers certainly love their children deeply, but society has often spared them the relentless guilt that so many working mothers quietly carry. There are, of course, wonderful exceptions. I have always admired Joe Biden's determination, after the tragic loss of his wife and daughter, to travel by train each day so he could return home to tuck his sons into bed. Parenthood is one of life's greatest privileges, yet we often don't appreciate its fragility until we become parents ourselves.

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I never spent much time thinking about having children. My mother, whose own father was a physician, gently warned me when I announced my plans to become a doctor. She knew firsthand how demanding medicine could be and wondered whether it was possible to have both a fulfilling medical career and a family.

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I was certain it was.

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I was wrong. Not because it couldn't be done, but because I had underestimated the emotional cost.

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My only child arrived unexpectedly during my third year of medical school. I was thrilled and scared all at once. This was the late 1980s, before maternity leave and accommodations for pregnant medical students were commonplace. Taking a year away from school felt impossible. I feared I might never return.

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So, I continued.

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My son, Rory, arrived several weeks early on Thanksgiving Day, just as I began a four-week elective research rotation. Those precious four weeks together disappeared in the blink of an eye before I was back on a demanding surgical sub-internship.

Then, just as I was trying to adjust to life as a new mother, Rory became gravely ill. He cried constantly, vomited nearly every feeding, and ultimately required surgery for pyloric stenosis. Thankfully, once the problem was corrected, he became the happy, healthy baby I had dreamed of.

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Leaving him each morning was heartbreaking.

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Fortunately, I had married a remarkable man who loved Rory as fiercely as I did. He rose before dawn so I could leave for the hospital, took time off work whenever Rory became sick, and often brought him to visit me during long weekends on call. We were a team, and together we somehow made it work.

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Residency was even harder. There were no accommodations for birthdays, school plays, holidays, or Halloween parades. Residency demanded everything. I still remember walking out of an in-service examination because Rory was seriously ill and needed to go to the emergency room. My chairman was understandably unhappy, but there was never really a choice. Sometimes motherhood simply must come first.

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After residency, life became gentler.

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When I entered private practice, I was able to work a four-day week whenever I wasn't covering call. That fifth day became "our day." Rory chose our adventures, whether they were simple outings or unforgettable ones.

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One of my favorites began with a newspaper advertisement he had circled.

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Golden Retriever puppies.

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"We're only going to look," I insisted.

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They had one puppy left.

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Her name was Rory.

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I had wisely brought my checkbook.

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As the years passed, medicine taught me something I never expected.

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Again and again, I cared for children and young adults whose lives ended far too soon—a teenager lost to an overdose, a young man left quadriplegic after a motorcycle accident, children whose parents would never again hear them laugh.

 

Every one of those families reminded me how unimaginably fragile life really is.

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Driving home after those heartbreaking days, I often found myself thinking, By the grace of God, that could have been my son.

 

So, each night, after the house had grown quiet, I would tiptoe into Rory's bedroom. Standing beside his bed, I would gently brush his blonde curls from his forehead, kiss him gently goodnight, thank God he was safe, and whisper a prayer that His angels would always watch over him.

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I don't think I was simply kissing my sleeping son.

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I was kissing the extraordinary gift of being his mother.