Episode 46: Susan Landers - Attention Working Moms and Healthcare Practitioners, Prevent that Burnout!

0:07 Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to another episode of Role Models. You see conversations with beautiful humans. I'm Jennifer Norman founder of the human Beauty movement and your host, this podcast thrives on your support. So if you like what you hear, follow us, radis reviewers and share this episode with everyone across your network. Now, today we're going to talk about a very important topic. It is burnout so many of us are parents who take care of others. But oftentimes we forget to take care of ourselves. My guest today is dr. Susan Landers Susan is an author a speaker, a mom of three and neonatologist with over 34 years experience in neonatal Intensive, Care Medicine. Susan suffered through a difficult midlife period that caused burn out after the birth of her third child. And this propelled her to make a Choice which included a career change?

1:02 She has recently released her new book so many babies. My life balancing a busy medical career and motherhood. Welcome Susan. Thank you, Jennifer. It's a pleasure to be here, talking with you. It's a pleasure to host you. Now, you're a doctor, you've worked full-time for over 30 years in a demanding role. And you raised three, kids tell us what that was like, oh, well, it was always a challenge and I love my Medical career. I became a doctor and a neonatologist before. I got married, and became a mom. And so my identity was quite a bit wrapped up in being a NICU doctor, and I loved that. I loved working with sick babies and mothers and babies.

1:45 And then when I got married and we decided to have children, I thought I'll be a perfect mother. I'm a pediatrician. I know everything about kids which was not true. I learned a lot as I read a long, we had three children within the first seven years and I literally flew by the seat of my pants. Working full-time, had a nanny at home. We were very fortunate to be able to afford that and my husband was also pediatrician, so he was very helpful, but you still have to learn how much work you can do and how much you can protect your home life and does the stress from work spill over. Into raising children.

2:31 And then there's the, what do your children? Throw at you? You know, my son had some difficult years in preschool and kindergarten, you know, things like that, that you face as you become a mother, I think as we have more children to and we're still working each child brings out different strengths and different weaknesses in us. So I'd like to talk about spending the first Seven Years Learning. How to be a good mom and I'm not sure I was every minute. Sometimes I work 24 hour shifts, and there's no easy way to be away from your children for that many hours. Even if your husband's there or Nanny's there. Sometimes I brought a lot of mom guilt home with me. Sometimes I brought a short temper and anger home with me. If a case wasn't going correctly, or there were some difficult parents and so, in the beginning of my career, Career. I literally learned along with my friends, how to be a working mother.

3:36 I was fortunate. I had a lot of other doctor friends who had children at the same time. We saw each other at work. We bounced ideas off each other. It was so wonderful to have that support of other women. Going through exactly the same challenges we move jobs. We move to a different city, my husband got a great job offer with a Sharon and raised, and my job was just okay. We had three little kids. My youngest was still nursing, and this is the period of my life. I had just turned 40. So new job, three kids, turned 40, new house, new schools. Every one of the life stressors, you can have. And I burned out, I became depressed. I was still working, still taking care of my kids, but it was a very unpleasant time Ntly friend of mine recognized that I was acting depressed.

4:34 You know, wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating, I was in a bad mood, all the time, all of the signs of Oppression but my baby was 12 months old so I didn't really think it was postpartum depression. I thought it was all the stress from my work and the move and being a mom to three kids. So I started therapy with a good psychiatrist who helped me sort through All of my issues, I will never forget the day that I described to him. My life was like person on the stage of Ed Sullivan Show, who runs around and spend sticks, and plates balance on the spinning sticks, and you add more sticks, and you spend more plates and you run around and you keep your plates from wobbling and you're just running from plate to play, and you're just spinning more plates and you're just frantic and Hectic and I described to him, that was my life, because that's how I imagined it.

5:34 I was just going from child to child, to work, to husband to school, to clinical research or whatever. And he looked at me and he said, why don't you take down some of the plates and I thought, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I mean, literally it was an epiphany when he said that and over the next six months, he helped me to sort through the plates, the issues. Was most important was not, what was I going to leave behind? Because I was doing too much. I literally was trying to be everything to everybody. Yeah. I think a lot of working moms career moms especially fall into that trap.

6:16 So used to achieving and succeeding in our careers that we think we're supposed to be perfect in every aspect of Our Lives. I've learned that nobody else was going to take care of me, but me. Me. I mean, my husband cared and my friends cared, of course, but I've learned that I had to exercise running was my thing for a long, long time. I learned that I had to talk with friends. I learned that I had to have some time off this working 50 or 60 hours a week is crazy. I learned that my children were allowed to say, Mom, you're really grouchy today and we talked a lot about my controlling, my Anger and my yelling at my kids, when I was tired after a long night on call, so I did lots of things to learn how to take care of myself. While I was being a mother to three busy children. And during that same period of time, I learn. I think what it means to be a good enough mother. I mentioned when I started, I wanted to be a perfect mom and discovered that was impossible.

7:29 You can't. I work full-time and be a perfect mother but being a good enough mother I think is about working at a job in which your fulfilled and that gives you pleasure that gives you satisfaction and and feeling worthwhile and also having time to be a mother but not a full-time. Mom, a mom. Who's gone some of the time and that trade-off means your kids do not have you all the time. They learn to be a little more independent. They learned that you have other priorities not just them and so that's what I think a good enough mother is, I think it's a working mom who allows herself to do various things. Not just be a mother but also have a career. Have a job, have a relationship, have her own friends and so it was during my midlife that I learned really how to be a good enough mother and felt that I really was that. And so now You provide coaching and mentorship on how to prevent burnout.

8:34 Can you talk about the difference between what it means to be burnt out versus stressed out? Oh yeah, there's a lot of burnout among Healthcare Providers right now. And the pandemic, really dealt a bad deal to all the health care providers, especially those hospital-based. But office space to because of the stresses, all the sick, people inadequate bed, space, vaccine conflicts are Mets over medicines and vaccines. They were given not a late too much work but also too much emotional burden at work. It wasn't just taking care of patients who were dying. It was taking care of too many patients and not having anything to do about it.

9:18 So, Healthcare, burnout, creates physical exhaustion, from too many hours of work, emotional overwhelm from issues. It's ethical issues cases that don't go well, death and dying, those sorts of things and when a healthcare provider recognizes physical exhaustion and being emotionally overwhelmed, they tend to detach and depersonalize from their patients. I noticed at once when I was much older in my 60s, I felt like I was sort of not as involved with my patients and I wasn't as involved with my colleagues.

9:59 There. But the crowning blow to healthcare provider burnout, burnout that Physicians and nurses have is when you feel you're no longer making a difference. When I felt like I was just going through the motions. I wouldn't making a difference, nothing mattered. That's when I knew that I had burned it and so that's a classic case of burnout for a physician or nurse. I think what working mothers are experiencing is the feeling that That they can't be everything to everybody. They are grouchy with their kids. They might yell at their kids, their relationship with their husband, or partner is strain.

10:42 They are not relying on their friends, they're drinking more wine. I've been there, they're not exercising, they're not sleeping. Well, there may be working too many hours if they're a manager, they're worrying about their co-workers. And whether they're doing okay, managers tend to worry a lot about schedules of their people and accommodate other people, instead of taking care of themselves. I don't know if you have to be a perfectionist to get working mother burnout, but you sure have to try to do everything for everybody, whether it's your children, your husband, your job, not seeing your friends, not taking care of yourself, working mother burnout. Out shows, very similar to physician burnout the Mom. Feels like she just can't deal with her kids. She just can't deal with that job. She hates, she just can't deal with her husband's relationship with her.

11:46 And so it's a sense of being overwhelmed by all the things in your life that you're challenged with all the things, you know, the pandemic asked women to do all the household chores Work from home and home school. Their kids remotely for two years working mothers had to do all that, that is ownerís and I think that anybody that made it through that and looks back and says, wow, that was awful. She's got my respect because it was an awful time. It was a lot of stress and some mothers who are still working full-time are burnout is a result of it? Yes, I actually read a statistic from From mental health Americas, 2022, mind, the workplace report. So this is recent that 80% of employees agree that the stress from work, affects their relationships with family, friends, and co-workers, and 47 percent of Physicians reported feeling burns out last year, which is up from a rate of 42 percent in 2020.

12:50 So numbers are getting worse. They are they, are you mentioned this stress from work? And I noticed when I felt burnout as a It was long before the pandemic, but there were difficult cases. There was a chaotic NICU, it was busy, lots of triplets, lots of twins, maybe a set of difficult parents, maybe too many emergency deliveries. It was too much stress in the workplace. Sometimes too much noise. Sometimes too many interruptions sometimes chaotic management and so even people who aren't in healthcare can be stuck in. A workplace, that's too loud.

13:32 That's two main that stew critical. That is without teamwork where your manager doesn't care about you. I think any workplace can be perverted by folks with bad attitudes. Especially if somebody doesn't know what a working mother is going through. If you have a manager, that's a man who does not have children or his children. Grown or he's divorced. And his wife takes care of the kids. That manager may not appreciate. Why you need to get to the school at 2 p.m. on Thursday for a parent-teacher conference that manager may not realize why you want to do two days a week remote from home and not every day in the office. So I think that the workplace characteristics also play into working mother burnout.

14:29 Out too many responsibilities were manager. That's not listening to you. You're feeling like, you're not a member of the team, you're just there doing your job, those kind of things, I think really burdened working mothers and I've got a lot of people are like I was you do carry some of that home with you. I remember going home and pouring up a glass of wine and unloading on my husband and him saying, I know there's nothing you can do about it but Didn't help. I mean, what I should have done is talk to my director. So I think that there are things that working mothers can do, the survey that you read.

15:11 Also mention the importance of flexible scheduling, the importance of remote work, for people who have long commutes, the importance of self-care for me, Jennifer learning how to take care of myself. And when I was a young adult and especially in my 40s, He's was so important. I had to figure out that if I didn't get exercise, I didn't get sleep. If I didn't get outside walking in nature, I didn't feel good. My mood was affected, we know, clearly that being out in nature, improves mood. Yeah, exercising, 20 minutes, three times a week, improves mood and sleep. We know that having social support and good friends, improves me.

16:00 And your emotional health and so, part of what working mothers are doing right now, I think is really learning how to take care of themselves. Now, that the pandemic is a little less frightening, a little less scary or children are back in school. I think we all need to take a breath. Look at our home life, talk to our partner, look at our work, life, our jobs and think about the issues. I I have developed a checklist and I tested it out with some Millennial moms, it's very short, it's only got 21 items on it. It's a checklist to determine if working moms or overstressed or burn out, and it's on my website.

16:45 Susan, Landers MD.com burn out. So your listeners can go to that website and find that free checklist. And I've been told by Millennial moms nurse Practitioners and young Physicians that they thought it was a helpful way to just kind of review the issues and their lives. What about the relationship? What about their children? What about their job? What about their health? What about their mental health? What about friendships? And so the little checklist takes you through all of those items that I hope will help other working mothers figure out where they are and how to get Get unstuck, amazing.

17:31 Well, thank you so much for that. Me Source, you talk about symptoms and signs of being burnt out versus depressed. But what about postpartum depression? What are some things? I know that you also said that you thought that you might have it, but we're sure because it was after the fact, it was about a year later. What are some of those things that young moms can look for, to know or identify whether or not they actually have postpartum depression. Well, postpartum depression in general occurs. Within the first three to six months after having a baby, not always, but usually, it can occur anytime in the first 12 months, it generally starts with a depressed mood and of the baby blues only last two or three weeks and everybody's exhausted and sleepy and can't function well, and the first month but postpartum depression makes women feel like they don't want to function. Well, they don't want to take care of their baby or they're overwhelmed by the the idea of caring for their baby or they're scared that they're going to hurt their baby. Their mood is depressed.

18:37 Of course, they can't sleep. They're eating either not enough or too much. They usually have behaviors that family members recognized as not being able to take care of themselves. Not getting a shower, not getting a bath. Not taking the baby outside in a stroller. So Mom's behavior, Comes very Inward and she draws within herself, some Mother's even have ideations of harming their baby. Now, the good news about postpartum depression is that it is totally treatable. I want your listeners to know it's very common about one in eight pregnant, women will get some degree of postpartum depression and it is treatable with either psycho therapy or Russians or both postpartum depression has to be talked about so that dads husbands Partners can help Mom recognize that if she's acting abnormal more than just being sleepy because the babies up all night that she can get some help nowadays. When mothers take their baby to see the pediatrician, the pediatrician will give mom's new moms, the first few months a checklist.

19:59 I think it's ten or eleven items for postpartum depression it's a great index. It's a quick three-minute thing in the office that could clue some of us into. Wow, this is really more than just baby blues. Wow, I really need to talk to somebody but I want to emphasize that postpartum. Depression is treatable. It is a medical condition. It is not something to be ashamed of it. Is a neurobiological Logical abnormality in your brain as the result of pregnancy delivery or their life. Stresses, there's one more thing. A lot of people don't know about postpartum, depression. I wanted to mention breast feeding difficulties like sore nipples Rod, nipples abnormal, latch struggling with milk supply, real breast, feeding difficulties. Second third, fourth month, they tend to correlate with postpartum.

20:59 Fresh women. Try so hard to breastfeed, eighty-five percent of American women. Start out after birth nursing their children and within three months that's drop down to about half that many. The reason I'm saying this is that breast feeding difficulties that don't get help mothers with problems who aren't supported tend to feel worse and worse about themselves as a mother. And so if any of your listeners are having Breastfeeding difficulties and haven't sought. Help that is even more important, so they don't get discouraged and don't develop depression. So, the correlation between breast feeding, difficulties and postpartum.

21:44 Depression is pretty clear, but it's all treatable, it's all fixable. Yeah. Thank you for that information, which is extremely important. And also the fact that feeling burnout, feeling overwhelmed, feeling anxious, feeling stressed out, having postpartum There is no shame. There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling those feelings that you feel, but it is important to know that you have agency over your life just like, Susan learns that she had to take away some of the plates and didn't even think about it up until reflected that back tire is like oh yeah I can take some of these plates away. I changed my life and make it a little bit easier for myself. There is really no reason for you to put yourself up to these high bars that are completely fabricated.

22:29 You know. No, it's okay to be a good enough mother. You don't have to be a perfect mother. There's no such thing as being a perfect mother, even though it's something we wanted wise, I think we should all aspire to be good enough mother's because as you said, there is no such thing as a perfect mother. We all have interests outside of raising children. Yeah, and we should allow ourselves to be the people. We want to be without the pressure of trying to be perfect right now. Susan, you have a delightful book behind you so Any babies that I would love for you to tell everybody what that's about. I wrote that book. So many babies after I retired because I wanted to tell stories about what life in the NICU was like there are a lot of Nikki moms on social media, talking about how horrible the experience was for them.

23:19 And I'm sure it was Dreadful and scary and traumatic and for those who got to take their babies home eventually, it was wonderful and relieving but the others Side of the Care. Are the doctors and nurses, who take care of these very sick. Babies, tiny preemies, sick newborns. And I chose some stories of babies who thrived whose parents were inspiring and courageous. Some of my favorite patients were in the hospital for six months and I tell stories of those families. And what I learned from them along the way, I also weave into At stories of my own motherhood, experience things that were challenging for me, things that worked out my third child develop dyslexia at age five or six and I didn't have a clue how to take care of it.

24:15 Much less have it evaluated. So things like that are in the book telling stories of how I struggled as a mother and usually succeeded got through the problems helped my kids with what they needed and I wrote those stories to reassure other working moms that what we're doing is really, very difficult. We really are balancing. Lots of things. We're juggling lots of different things and most of the time we're doing a good enough job and so I wrote the book to be reassuring to other working mothers that what they were going through. Was normal, dr.

24:57 Susan Landers. Thank you. So much for being with us today. So it's been my pleasure. Thank you.