the power of the pager

beep beep beep.

Anyone married to a spouse with a pager just shuddered.

I remember when my husband first received his pager in Medical school. I thought it was kind of cool when it first went off. It made the idea that he was one day going to be a real doctor more of a reality. If he didn't feel important wearing it, at least I felt important for him.

The novelty has long since worn off.

And while hate is a very strong word, and my mom told me never to use it, I'm pretty sure I hate my husband's pager.

This obnoxious, electronic, little piece of plastic that has so much control over our lives.

What I dislike the most is the unpredictability. I don't want to not include my hubby in my plans for the day/evening. But at the same time, I don't want to make plans, only to be disappointed when the darn thing goes off and he has to head to the hospital.

Inevitably I end up planning nothing for the days he's on call, yet secretly hoping that maybe we could do such and such if he doesn't get paged. And then when he does get called in, I'm disappointed that my secret plans were ruined.

It's Murphy's law: If we do make tentative plans, he will get paged and have to head to the hospital. If we don't make any plans, or if I make plans to do something without him, chances are he'll have a quiet day at home.

And did I mention that the Doctor's pager seems to be about 5 decibels louder than any one else's pager? Seriously. As if it wasn't ornery enough in its simple existence, it feels the need to announce its importance to our entire neighborhood with every high pitched bleep.

I knew when my hubby started out in medicine that a pager would be a part of lives. I just think that I had glamourized it in my head. You know, getting paged and having to race off to the hospital to save someone's life. But the pager goes off for many many different reasons when you're on call for the entire province. And none of these reasons seem to phase my hubby. Like a lot of things in this adventure known as residency, I didn't really know what we were in for. And like always, the Doctor is amazingly more accepting and tolerant of the annoyances in our life.

I'm struggling to come to terms with the existence of the pager in our lives, knowing that this small square monstrosity is stuck with us for a while. But it's difficult. Perhaps as the Doctor's call load lightens a little bit, and the high pitched bleeping becomes less frequent, I'll be better able to cope.

Or maybe once these crazy pregnancy hormones disappear I'll just be better able to cope. period.

a blessed christmas

I know.

This post is about a month late.

That's what happens when you're pregnant, chasing after a toddler, and married to a resident.

But I still wanted to write it because this Christmas was so different for us from ones in the past.

Last year my hubby had to work on New Year's Eve. No biggie. We don't really do anything huge for New Year's and I was content to spend it with friends while he worked.

This year the Doctor drew the short straw and had to be on-call for Christmas Day.

At first I was kind of upset.

Okay, I was really upset.

We have always flown home for Christmas since we moved out east, away from our families (for residency). We spend Christmas Eve at my parents and Christmas Day at my hubby's parents. It's been a great tradition that always worked really well. It's busy, but I love being with my family over the holidays, and participating in the traditions we've created. So I was really sad that this year it would be much different. We wouldn't be able to fly out until the 26th.

Occasionally I have these moments where I get very frustrated with residency, the amount of time it consumes, and the demands it places on my hubby. This was once of those times.

Then I started to think about it a bit more.

And I actually started to get a little excited.

Being in our home for Christmas meant that we could start our own traditions with the Bean. It meant I could actually decorate our house for Christmas (something I never bothered to do since we weren't ever here). It meant we could have our own tree! (also something we've never done since moving away). The more I thought about it and began to plan, the happier I was with the turn of events.

Fortunately my hubby is in a residency program that has home call* which meant he could go in early on Christmas day to round on his patients and then (barring any unforeseen emergencies), he would be able to spend the rest of the day with us.

What I originally thought was going to be a big lonely failure of a Christmas turned out to be one of the most blessed ones. We went to a Christmas Eve church service as a family and opened our stockings when we got home. And when the Bean and I woke up in the morning, my hubby was home and ready to eat a leisurely breakfast with us before we started the gift-giving. It was relaxed. It was joy-filled. It was ours.

It was so fun to be able to watch our Bean's reaction to Christmas, to see her slowly start to grasp the concept of gift-giving and present-ripping. To watch her little face light up at the smallest gift. To be a family. Just us. To start new traditions of our own.

I am so thankful to have an extended family who is flexible. Who were willing to wait for us and celebrate on different days than we normally have.

We got the best of both worlds this year.

A Christmas of our own and a Christmas with our families.

I didn't realize how much I would treasure being able to have our own Christmas as a family. My family. The family I'm building with my husband.

I am so blessed.

*home call means you can "stay home" when you are on-call, unless you get called in to deal with something. In house call means you must stay at the hospital for the entirety of your on-call shift.