This is the month I celebrate some of the amazing mothers in veterinary medicine.Today you get to meet the co-founder of the DVMoms facebook group. We members know the strength of the community that Jordan Gesimondo has helped to create. If you’re not a member yet, I’d highly recommend joining the over 15,000 of us already there! I wanted to talk to Jordan about her journey into motherhood in hopes of helping other young veterinary professionals to realize that parenting and veterinary medicine can go together - you just might need to get a little bit creative and find a lot of boundaries!...Meet Jordan!"I became a veterinarian in 2011 when I graduated from Colorado State University. While I always knew I wanted to be a veterinarian, nobody could have prepared me for the extent of what the field involved. My path to motherhood was very similar. While I always knew I wanted to be a mom, nobody openly talked about the reality of it all. My first child’s birth was traumatic, with a plethora of postpartum complications. Everyone talks about the pleasantries of motherhood. Nobody tells you your recovery may be brutal, you may struggle to bond with your baby, or have crippling postpartum anxiety and depression. They don’t mention the night sweats, the difficulty of breastfeeding, the mastitis, the urge to smack your sleeping partner, or the sleep deprivation so severe that you can’t remember your own name. Then, just as you are learning up from down, maternity leave is over, and you go back to work.
For me, navigating the challenges of veterinary medicine with a baby that would not sleep more than two hours at a time was a form of torture. If it weren’t for my good friend, Megan Emerick, I’m not sure I would have made it. Luckily, we were in the same stage of life, and knowing I wasn’t alone was monumental. Megan had the brilliant idea of forming a Facebook group to help support our friends in similar situations. With that, DVMoms was born.
I graduated with an MPH from the University of Minnesota in 2016. It was a two-year dual degree program that I should have completed with my DVM by 2012. However, since they offered a generous seven years to complete it, and I have an honorary Ph.D. in procrastination, I utilized every minute of those seven years. My interest in public health initially centered around zoonotic disease and global public health. As I became more established in private clinical practice, my eyes were opened to the vast need for support within our own veterinary community.
I now know that for this field to be sustainable, the health we need to focus on is our own. My passion focuses on all my veterinary colleagues’ mental, physical and emotional health, but particularly mothers needing support in a field that often fails to recognize the struggles unique to being a veterinarian and a parent. I strive to be a present, loving mother to my kids while also being a caring, compassionate veterinarian to my patients and clients. I truly believe that with positive changes, it will be possible to do both."...Links to find more information-Here it is, THE DVMoms - Life in the Trenches Facebook group!-DVMoms
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