Just a little thought on love

This might sound silly, or even ignorant, coming from someone who is going to be a pediatrician, but I think that one of the things I least understood before I saw a lot of newborn babies and their families was how parents handle having a baby with a congenital disability, like Down's syndrome for example. 

When you're childless and thinking about your theoretical future parent self, the idea of having a baby with a disability from day one seems very scary. I can remember having many discussions, before and after starting medical school, about whether or not I or the person I was talking to would choose to keep a baby, knowing that he or she would be born with a bad disease.

But one of the things I've really only internalized in the last couple of years is that, in the end, your baby is just your baby, and there's exactly the same amount of love between a parent and a baby, regardless of what disabilities, physical or mental, that baby is born with.  A child is just a child, and that child will grow at his own pace, into his own body, and will just be the person he is, with the parents and problems he has, forever.

I don't know why it's taken me so long to understand this, but it has.  And now I do, which is nice. 

Blocked

Well, the goal is to post every day till March, but I really just can't think of anything worthwhile to say today. Brain is too tired from alternately thinking about sick babies and being freaked out about how much medicine I've forgotten in the last year.

I can feel it rattling around in there somewhere, though. (The medicine, that is.) Hopefully if I shake it around enough it will fall out and land on my patients.

Sheep wrangling

Today I attended my first rodeo, which was awesome. And mutton busting is officially my new favorite sport.

Do I dare to eat a peach?

Yes. This one. The best kind of pulse purchase.

Seattle foods

Foods I ate on the first day of my rotation in Seattle: Starbuck's coffee from the cafeteria, blackberry pie brought in by the other med student, wild rice salad and Greek pasta salad (all vegetarian) for noon conference lunch.

So far seems like my kind of place.

I always think this is weird

Overheard at my sister's house: four-year-old Trevor playing pretend with legos or something, saying, "This big one is my iphone and this little one is my ipod!" 

I guess it's a nano.

How things look

When it comes down to it, one of my most fundamental traits is that I'm a sucker for for a lovely sight.  In nature, in high-fashion spreads in the New York Times, in museums, on brightly-clad African ladies - I love an interesting aesthetic.  I do.

Which, on the theme of Reasons I Love New York, is, well, another reason I love New York.  There are just more bright colors, more artistic expression in the way people dress, more interesting signage.  There are creative office spaces and vintage flea markets, which, however cheesy or overpriced, certainly provide fodder for one's artistic imagination.

I also love how much people who live here absorb this facet of New York as part of their culture.  When I come here, I become instantly more aware of the aesthetic my surroundings, and much more apt to talk about it - what it means to me, how it makes me feel, why I think it's interesting.  And my friends here are just as apt to discuss these things at length, conversations I really don't have anywhere else.  It's a part of my brain that lies dormant much of the time, as I'm carefully cultivating my more sciency bits.

I guess what I'm saying is that coming to New York reminds me of pieces of myself that I forget about, don't always have time for.  And it's nice to be reminded sometimes that those pieces exist.