Further to my g'day recently... I am mother of three kids (6 yo - 18 mo). I work part time (3-4 supposed half days/week, in reality 0830-1430 to as late as 1600, meant to finish at 1230! and no most (vast majority) of that overtime is not paid) as a family physician in a country town in Australia. My husband and I share homeschooling of our 6 year old daughter. He works part time trying to get a shed ready to move into on our small farm when I am home . I am sitting the IBCLC exam this year. I think whether you can manage work and having babies with you depends on many variables related to both the person, the requirements of work, and the baby. I would never have managed to take my kids to general practice work, but they routinely came with me to meetings, educational and others. A friend of mine (also a doctor) working way more hours than me took each of hers to work until they were crawling. (She had trouble free breastfeeding.) I found with a baby with me I could not concentrate on work and I could not concentrate on feeding. It was always a struggle for me feeding with poor attachment with first from ?abnormal suckling/whatever and resultant recurrent thrush and mastitis for all 3. Another problem i have found is through having 3 extended maternity leaves for feeling lousy in pregnancy (I feel like i am going to vomit or faint for the whole pregnancy) and post partum recovery with recurrent mastitis and then working very part-time hours that i don't "feel" very professional any more. I have not had time to read journals, to keep up with new drugs/treatments. I would not have it any other way as far as taking the time off or having kids or working part time, but I look at the other childless colleagues and feel less sure of myself etc except when it comes to understanding and empathy with parents! In the suburbs of Melbourne where I worked previously other (male full- time) doctors called the likes of me "hobby doctors" (not to our faces). I would say that I have my priorities right for my family/life, do they? Being "professional" seems to imply "separate from family". The sooner a breastfed baby (especially, but also older kids) is seen as an inseparable part of the mother-infant dyad the better for our society. In my humble opinion! As far as volunteering goes, I do lots of work that I am not paid for. That just seems to go with the nature of general practice. What strikes me about this issue is whether you are expected to work for no pay or whether you want to finish something you are doing beyond your hours of work for whatever reason. In other words, how "voluntary" it really is. Alison MBBS, FRACGP, DipRACOG ABA Counsellor mother of 3 darlings *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html