I loved Cathy Bargar's post on this issue

As a doctor I have also been accused of being unprofessional by bringing my baby with me when visiting other institutions. No one would dare in my own place where I am the boos.

I have found this very hard to deal with, especially when it comes from other women. Frankly I have found it hard to keep my composure at meeting when I have a toddler devastating someone's office, or tweaking my blouse open. But those were just the bad days and I got better at organising it all and warning people that I cam as a package and also working out what limits I was prepared to accept and what I would challenge - a very personal decision.

One of my fondest memories is of being on stage singing at a concert in Harvard. My husband let my toddler wander up and I was on about verse 10 of a particularly dirgeful Irish ballad about a woman forced to marry against her will, when my daughter confidently toddled across the stage got up on my lap and started feeding. She finished just as the women in the song committed suicide, we a got a round of applause (well it was mother's day) and Harvey Fineberg (Dean of the school of public Health) was not quite sure what to do or say.

You see I think we all need to redefine professional. I am sure that when twenty years from now I get some award for something there will be an introduction to me and I will make darn sure that hwen they do the bit where they tell funny sotires about your life they tell that as a story. 

Just as my own mother had to redefine that doctors wore skirts and had to have a different chair setting in the anaesthetic room becaus they were shorter, and another generation had to define that doctors got maternity leave, we will be the ones who define professional as including nursing a baby and having it with us.

I guess we all need to take care of ourselves and support each other as we go about making this change

But I just know that it will come.

Mary E Black
Professor of Public Health
University of Queensland

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