Who gets to sleep?

I had a bad call night on Saturday night. Though I am now an esteemed "upper level" and don't get all the floor calls, I get all the outside pages from patients who want an antibiotic over the phone (no), a refill on their narcotics (absolutely not), or want to know how much Tyleonl to give their three year old with a fever (happy to help). I also get to carry the code pager (insert drums of doom here.)

Before noon, my intern and I ran a code on a 32 year old schizophrenic with diabetes - a terrible combination if there ever was any. He took too much Seroquel and and was in DKA. We pulled out most everything in our arsenal but he died. The primary doctor came along just in time to tell the family...we were saved that horrible task. As we wrote our code note though we heard his mother sobbing. There is nothing, that tears me up more than hearing Mommies cry over their dead child - be they 32 weeks or 32 years.

And things never went uphill from there. We got less than two hours sleep. I'm not sure exactly how much as my rule is that if I get less than two hours, I'm not allowed to calculate exactly how much. It doesn't really matter because you are exhausted anyways and the numbers only depress you. Both the intern and I are pregnant - she in her first trimester, me in my second - so the night was a little harder than usual on both of us.

When I got home, I immediatly went to play with my daughter, now two, for a bit. Daddy went upstairs for a moment while we played princess-dress-up and made pretend muffins. After a half hour, I was getting pretty tired so I went up to find Daddy so that he could take over. He was lying in bed and said, "I'm going to take a nap; I didn't sleep much last night." And the bum feel asleep. Four hours later, I got my nap.

This is not the first time this has happened. Is this because I'm a sucker Mommy? Is this because I'm a woman MD? I was going to get all up in arms but then I talked to my male colleage who is a Daddy of an almost two year old and apparently the same thing happens to him. He gets home exhausted after call to have the child placed into his arms and Wife disappears for awhile. It tough work being a single parent for over 24 hours and, yes, we do desperatly want to spend time with our child...but sometimes we just get tired. I knew if I pressed the issue if I ever was so tired that I wasn't a safe mommy, Hubby would take over...but it would be nice to be tucked into bed by Hubby and Beautiful Daughter soon after getting home with both their blessings.

Then again, I am an awfully lucky mommy to have healthy child.