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Family with Hannah Renno · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:02
  Dawn: Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:04
  Dawn: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:05
  Dawn: Don baker.
• 0:06
  Dawn: Are you looking for a new approach to finding work-life balance?
• 0:10
  Dawn: You've come to the right place.
• 0:12
  Dawn: Listen, as I interview amazing women professionals, who've taken the steps to lean out.
• 0:17
  Dawn: And find balance on their own terms.
• 0:20
  Hello?
• 0:20
  Hello.
• 0:20
  Thanks for being here today.
• 0:22
  I'm going to be talking with Hannah Renault.
• 0:24
  She is a pediatrician from little rock and is a crazy good storyteller.
• 0:29
  As you'll notice, when you start listening to this conversation.
• 0:32
  She takes us on a ride where we get to witness her evolution.
• 0:36
  From being just spread thin with no margins as a stressed out pediatrician.
• 0:43
  To wanting to be a stay at home mom and homeschool her four children.
• 0:47
  So I am going to read you her bio.
• 0:52
  Hannah Renault is a general pediatrician who walked away from a busy practice to pursue her dream of being a stay at home.
• 0:59
  Mom.
• 1:00
  She now homeschools her four children in little rock Arkansas and has a breastfeeding medicine.
• 1:05
  Micropractice.
• 1:07
  She is perpetually running out of hours in the day, but she's forever grateful that most of them are spent shoulder to shoulder with her kids.
• 1:15
  Without further ado please enjoy my conversation with hannah Renno.
• 1:22
  Dawn: Hannah Renau, welcome to the show.
• 1:24
  Dawn: Can you please introduce yourself?
• 1:27
  Hannah: Sure.
• 1:27
  Hannah: My name is Hannah Reno.
• 1:29
  Hannah: I live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
• 1:31
  Hannah: I am a general pediatrician by training and also an IBCLC lactation consultant, and I'm also a mother of four.
• 1:40
  Hannah: And a couple years ago, I Took a relatively drastic, change in my professional life, um, and personal life for that matter.
• 1:49
  Hannah: And so that's what's led me to meet you.
• 1:52
  Dawn: Great.
• 1:52
  Dawn: Well, tell us a little bit about how you've leaned out from the typical pediatrician life.
• 1:59
  Hannah: Sure.
• 1:59
  Hannah: So, my husband and I graduated from pediatric residency together in 2014.
• 2:04
  Hannah: So we had couples matched and we started residency with an eight month old.
• 2:09
  Hannah: During residency, we had two more babies, some of which were on purpose.
• 2:15
  Hannah: So it has been a very busy three years.
• 2:17
  Hannah: And then he matched, into pediatric cardiology fellowship in Nashville.
• 2:22
  Hannah: And so our family moved there and I took a general pediatrics job to be the breadwinner to start paying off our med school loans, and supporting our family of five at the time.
• 2:32
  Hannah: And so, yeah, I loved those years as a general pediatrician.
• 2:35
  Hannah: I was employed in a private practice in town, and I worked full time.
• 2:40
  Hannah: Um, so our third baby was three months old when I started.
• 2:45
  Hannah: And then we had our fourth baby, two years into starting in that practice.
• 2:51
  Hannah: So then we were a family of six and he was still only halfway through fellowship.
• 2:55
  Hannah: And, I was grateful for the financial provision.
• 2:58
  Hannah: I was able to bring to the family.
• 3:01
  Hannah: And I really loved my patients.
• 3:03
  Hannah: But I.
• 3:05
  Hannah: Was already feeling sort of logistically overwhelmed by, how much I wanted to be involved in my kid's life and how much I wanted to sleep, uh, how much I wanted to run and pursue other things.
• 3:18
  Hannah: I have lots of outside hobbies.
• 3:20
  Hannah: And so I had always envisioned this, you know, well, when we're done with training, it's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
• 3:26
  Hannah: And we just have to hang on until we get there and then everything's going to be fine.
• 3:31
  Hannah: And bountiful.
• 3:33
  Hannah: Um, and honestly I had expected that when I became an attending and quickly realized that wasn't the case.
• 3:39
  Hannah: I'll never forget our first Christmas.
• 3:41
  Hannah: When I had a big girl job and we had the three kids and we were looking at the budget for Christmas presents and my husband said, Don't buy any Christmas presents this year.
• 3:49
  Hannah: We do not have the money and I remember being sad and mad and shocked that we are two physicians who can't afford Christmas presents and Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, you know, I we can do homemade things that sort of thing I just it was really tough feeling still financially strapped because of massive amounts of med school debt and his ongoing training and child care.
• 4:15
  Hannah: I mean, we had been paying 10, 000 a year per child for child care since they were all babies.
• 4:21
  Hannah: I again fell victim to thinking that things would be easy once we got my husband's real job and would have financial freedom from that.
• 4:31
  Hannah: And, um, we both took jobs at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences, Arkansas Children's Hospital, and we were thrilled.
• 4:40
  Hannah: That was sort of a homecoming for me because this is where I went to undergrad at the University of Arkansas.
• 4:45
  Hannah: And when I signed my contract, I asked for six months off before I started before my first day and they were happy to give it to me and I was so grateful.
• 4:54
  Hannah: And I called that my delayed gratification, maternity leave for all four children.
• 4:59
  Dawn: Hmm.
• 4:59
  Hannah: It was amazing.
• 5:00
  Hannah: I loved it.
• 5:01
  Hannah: I didn't miss work for a single second.
• 5:03
  Hannah: I loved getting to do mom things with the kids.
• 5:06
  Hannah: I loved having more margin.
• 5:08
  Hannah: I loved being able to be a homemaker.
• 5:11
  Hannah: I love picking them up from school every day.
• 5:13
  Hannah: I just, I didn't miss it for a single second, even though I had never.
• 5:18
  Hannah: Not like my job as a pediatrician.
• 5:19
  Hannah: So I was surprised how much I didn't miss it.
• 5:22
  Hannah: But the contract had already been signed.
• 5:24
  Hannah: I still intended to go back to work, and get start my new job at the University of Arkansas.
• 5:30
  Hannah: And so after six months, I did that.
• 5:32
  Hannah: And how did A genuinely wonderful experience.
• 5:35
  Hannah: Um, I the program was supportive.
• 5:37
  Hannah: I asked to start a breastfeeding medicine program at Arkansas Children's.
• 5:41
  Hannah: And so half of my job was general pediatrician.
• 5:43
  Hannah: Half of my job was breastfeeding medicine.
• 5:46
  Hannah: And, again, I had the full support of clinical administrative staff.
• 5:50
  Hannah: And so in many ways, this is a dream job.
• 5:52
  Hannah: And our kids were now well established in the private school they were attending, and they loved it.
• 5:56
  Hannah: And it was just around the corner from the Children's Hospital.
• 5:59
  Hannah: So we got to spend the commute in the car with them each day.
• 6:02
  Hannah: Finances were easier now that we had two full incomes and we chose to start paying off really aggressive as aggressively as possible.
• 6:10
  Hannah: My school debt, with the additional income.
• 6:13
  Hannah: So it didn't feel like much more for discretionary use, but it felt great that we were making huge headway on the debt.
• 6:21
  Hannah: And then it just gradually felt, more and more like I was tired and all margin had disappeared.
• 6:32
  Hannah: And, um, my children were getting what was left of me at the end of the day, and certainly not the best of me.
• 6:41
  Hannah: You know, we're racing to finish up our charts so that we can go pick our kids up before the after school program was gonna dump them on the streets.
• 6:48
  Hannah: Not really, but that's what it felt like.
• 6:49
  Hannah: You know, gotta get there by 6 p.
• 6:51
  Hannah: m.
• 6:52
  Hannah: To fight traffic on the way home to get spill into the house with backpacks and lunch boxes and try to find some food to put on the table and get everybody rushed off to bed.
• 7:02
  Hannah: And it just, it felt like the worst kind of hamster wheel, and it was not at all the pot of gold I had envisioned, I felt like I was not able to parent the way I wanted to parent.
• 7:10
  Hannah: I was not able to be a wife the way I wanted to be a wife.
• 7:14
  Hannah: And slowly I started resenting the problems of my patients.
• 7:21
  Hannah: Well meaning parents would come with their child to me to ask me to help them solve their child's problem.
• 7:28
  Hannah: And I'm good at that.
• 7:29
  Hannah: I'm trained for that.
• 7:30
  Hannah: And I usually enjoy that.
• 7:33
  Hannah: But I would find myself, mid conversation with a patient and their parent, hearing my inner voice saying, I'm sitting here so that you can pay me to solve your child's problem so that I can pay somebody else.
• 7:48
  Hannah: To take care of my child.
• 7:49
  Hannah: And it just felt sickening to be honest.
• 7:53
  Hannah: It got to where I just wanted to solve my own children's problems, not be paid to solve other children's problems.
• 7:59
  Hannah: And so that sort of.
• 8:01
  Hannah: Placed the bug of considering what is my purpose and what are my goals?
• 8:08
  Dawn: I just wanted to repeat some of the words that you said that I was writing down as you talked, double dock family, dream job, logistically overwhelmed, missed my hobbies, figured out there was no pot of gold.
• 8:23
  Dawn: There was culminating in this.
• 8:27
  Dawn: Resentment of your patients and a feeling of depersonalization, do you feel that that resentment was the last straw or the turning point,
• 8:37
  Hannah: great question.
• 8:39
  Hannah: I think there are, again, it's so multifactorial and I'm glad.
• 8:43
  Hannah: And maybe it's because, sometimes I need to hear the message 10 times or be bashed over the head with it.
• 8:48
  Hannah: So some other factors were, um, we went to a pool party with some friends that were all pediatric medical professionals in the summer of 2019.
• 8:59
  Hannah: And we brought our four kids and we had just arrived.
• 9:02
  Hannah: It was a birthday party and we were saying our greetings.
• 9:06
  Hannah: And, when we were in the car right before we got out, I went over all of the verbal instructions about pool safety and all four of our children had, participated in safety swimming lessons.
• 9:16
  Hannah: And I'm just, you know, hyper aware of the risk of water and young children.
• 9:22
  Hannah: So not that I felt immune, but I felt prepared.
• 9:27
  Hannah: Next thing I know, one of the moms, was soaking wet in her full clothing and brought our three year old daughter to us.
• 9:36
  Hannah: And so thankfully right away, I was able to see that she was fine, but she said, I just found her submerged in the pool and this mom had been the only one that saw her out of, I don't know how many 789 pediatric medical professionals there who didn't have their eyes on the pool and it sounds like she had just.
• 9:53
  Hannah: Walked right past all the adults, walked straight in the water, zero attempts to float like she had been taught in her classes, zero attempts to call for help, zero sign of distress, just walked straight down the stairs until her hair was underwater.
• 10:08
  Hannah: And God bless the mom who saw her and dove in six months pregnant and got her out and she was unscathed.
• 10:14
  Hannah: Over the next 24 hours.
• 10:16
  Hannah: I couldn't stop processing and actually my mom, when I told her what happened, planted these words.
• 10:23
  Hannah: If a tragedy happened in your life, are you living the life you want to?
• 10:28
  Hannah: And when I saw how closely I could have come to losing one of my children, I thought instantly without a second's hesitation, this is not the life I would want to be living.
• 10:41
  Hannah: And so that was the trigger that really started the cascade of something is going to change.
• 10:46
  Hannah: What are we changing?
• 10:48
  Dawn: That story, that situation that happened is really giving me chills right now.
• 10:54
  Dawn: How did you approach your family and start the process rolling to change your situation?
• 11:03
  Hannah: It was a bit of a domino effect.
• 11:04
  Hannah: It wasn't, I'm gonna change my whole life.
• 11:07
  Hannah: The immediate thing was, I re enrolled her in safety swim lessons.
• 11:11
  Hannah: Even though I hadn't found it very effective, I mean, she had been attending for months and months and months, we had stopped because we were so busy the previous month, and I thought, well, this is one tangible thing I can do.
• 11:22
  Hannah: And so my husband, looked at me and said, great, what are we cutting out?
• 11:26
  Hannah: And I got defensive and angry and, I'm really blessed in my marriage that we have excellent communication and our fights are more of impassioned speeches towards each other.
• 11:36
  Hannah: So it was a productive.
• 11:37
  Hannah: Disagreement.
• 11:38
  Hannah: And I'm saying it doesn't matter how busy we are.
• 11:41
  Hannah: We are fitting safety swim lessons back in and he was saying, fine.
• 11:46
  Hannah: If you want to do safety swim lessons, we are already beyond capacity.
• 11:49
  Hannah: What are you removing?
• 11:50
  Hannah: And I didn't want to remove anything because I like doing all the things.
• 11:54
  Hannah: I don't even remember what we were enrolled in at the time.
• 11:56
  Hannah: And so this was the disagreement and he just held firm.
• 11:59
  Hannah: We will not add in anything until we take something out.
• 12:03
  Hannah: I actually went out of town to Chicago a few weeks after that alone for a breastfeeding medicine conference and was with one of my, med school buddies.
• 12:12
  Hannah: And so we had good time to to chat and we're just sort of contemplating life and have a lot of the same sentiments about things and a lot of the same desire to be excellent mothers and wives.
• 12:24
  Hannah: I remember on the flight home.
• 12:26
  Hannah: I just had an epiphany and I thought I Want to have a fifth baby, which is not at all what anybody expects when we're sitting here talking about no margin, but it was this big scheme about having a fifth baby and taking a year sabbatical, that's what was going to go along with it is take a year off of medicine, stay home with a baby for once.
• 12:50
  Hannah: I just got into breastfeeding conference.
• 12:52
  Hannah: I would actually be able to get to nurse directly instead of living with a pump and bottles everywhere.
• 12:56
  Hannah: So, yeah, this was my solution to what I'm going to do to increase the margin of my own.
• 13:02
  Hannah: Is go have a fifth child and I knew that number one, my husband who had had a vasectomy three years pregnant was going to be opposed for so many reasons.
• 13:11
  Hannah: We had talked in premarital counseling how he only wanted two children and I always wanted four.
• 13:16
  Hannah: So I had already doubled his perceived capacity and it's hilarious now in hindsight, but I really.
• 13:24
  Hannah: Felt like the heavens opened up and the angels sang and said, you're supposed to have another child.
• 13:29
  Hannah: So I came up with a grand scheme of how I was going to take the children out of their private school, because by the time I was working part time, hundred percent of my post tax post retirement salary.
• 13:42
  Hannah: Went to their school tuition.
• 13:43
  Hannah: So I thought, well, that's a net neutral.
• 13:45
  Hannah: I will just take them out of school and, homeschool them for a year and have a baby and have this all coincide.
• 13:53
  Hannah: And then I'll go back to work and send everybody back to school.
• 13:56
  Hannah: So that was my plan.
• 13:57
  Hannah: And after about a month, I.
• 13:59
  Hannah: Was brave enough to bring it to my husband and he listened to every word I had to say with genuine, attention and affection.
• 14:09
  Hannah: Even didn't say a word.
• 14:11
  Hannah: Let me get it all out.
• 14:12
  Hannah: And then he said, is there anything else you have to say?
• 14:16
  Hannah: And I said, no, I think, I think he said, okay, I love you.
• 14:22
  Hannah: There is 0% chance of that ever happening.
• 14:27
  Hannah: And I was hurt and mad and sad, and confused because it literally felt like there had been sort of a message from God.
• 14:34
  Hannah: That certainly was not a one night thing.
• 14:36
  Hannah: It was months long and he never complained about, me being a broken record begging for a fifth child.
• 14:45
  Hannah: Um, yeah, that's what I was perseverating on is the, the, another baby.
• 14:51
  Hannah: And finally, one night, he goes, Hannah, how about you do your plan?
• 14:58
  Hannah: How about You do all of it.
• 15:00
  Hannah: You take the children out of school, you homeschool them without the baby.
• 15:05
  Hannah: And as absurd as that sounds, that had never occurred to me.
• 15:08
  Hannah: It's like, I thought I needed another human to justify me not working.
• 15:14
  Hannah: It just had never occurred to me that I have a medical degree and I didn't need to use it.
• 15:18
  Hannah: And I thought, how did I never think of that?
• 15:22
  Hannah: And then the nail in the coffin, those conversations had already begun.
• 15:27
  Hannah: I was involved with a patient satisfaction work group at the children's Representative and they asked a question.
• 15:37
  Hannah: I answered the question.
• 15:39
  Hannah: And one of the administrators there is such a lovely woman, and she looked at me and she said, I hope you wake up every day knowing that you are exactly where you're supposed to be.
• 15:48
  Hannah: Because she was so grateful for the answer I had given.
• 15:52
  Hannah: And involuntarily, it's like my voice spoke without my brain even thinking enough to stop it.
• 15:59
  Hannah: I shrieked, I don't, I mean it was loud, like a yell cry, I yelled, I don't, wake up, knowing that I'm where I'm supposed to be, and I put my head on the table, and the whole room fell silent, going, what's wrong with her?
• 16:13
  Hannah: Um, but hearing myself say it out loud, sort of confess to something that I didn't know how profoundly I felt, that felt undeniable as well.
• 16:23
  Hannah: So all of these things.
• 16:25
  Hannah: Started feeling like, well, the puzzle is going together and it's all pointing in one direction.
• 16:31
  Dawn: Thank you so much for sharing that because this story of you wanting to have a 5th child shows how.
• 16:40
  Dawn: We get blinded to certain things, and we have certain thought patterns and rules that are in our heads about how things need to go.
• 16:51
  Dawn: And the one that I feel in that story is like, the thing that justifies me to be able to take this time off and to walk away from this career, either temporarily or permanently, is having another child.
• 17:05
  Dawn: Whereas, It doesn't have to be that, and it took another person to show that to you, To, have the argument with you, whatever you want to call it, if you call it an argument, or if you call it a good discussion.
• 17:19
  Hannah: Yes, I agree.
• 17:20
  Hannah: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Hannah: Months and months.
• 17:21
  Hannah: I mean, we'd be lying down for bed, exhausted from the end of the day, and I would, open up another, the same conversation, and pour my heart out all over again, and I would see his eyes drooping, and I'd say, you're tired, we could go to sleep, and he goes, no, no, no, you have my full attention.
• 17:34
  Hannah: But yes, I figure a council of many is wise and prudent, and so I called lots of people, many of whom I had not spoken with in years.
• 17:44
  Hannah: Pouring out the story and gauging the feedback and saying, are we nuts here?
• 17:49
  Hannah: And again, some of them were not from the medical side.
• 17:52
  Hannah: Some were from the, we have large family side or the homeschooling side, somewhere relatively close to me and many had some distance and I intentionally sought that out.
• 18:01
  Hannah: Because I felt like they could be more objective.
• 18:03
  Hannah: Um, and overwhelmingly, everybody thought this was a fantastic idea to step away from medicine.
• 18:09
  Hannah: So, so how that timeline worked is, you know, the, the swimming pool incident was the summer of 2019.
• 18:15
  Hannah: The breastfeeding conference where I decided to have a fifth child was September of 2019.
• 18:20
  Hannah: And then in January, 2020, I told my boss that my last day would be May 22nd, 2020, because that was the last day of the school year.
• 18:29
  Hannah: And, you know, our kids were in school and loved it and committed, and I needed to keep earning money to continue paying the tuition at the school they were already enrolled in.
• 18:36
  Hannah: And then March 2020 happened.
• 18:39
  Hannah: And, um, Obviously, that was blindsiding to us in the same way it was to the whole world, and yet I already had this perfect plan in place.
• 18:48
  Hannah: I already was going to be a stay at home mom.
• 18:50
  Hannah: I already was going to homeschool.
• 18:52
  Hannah: And so, the last, there were seven weeks left when everything shut down, that our kids would have to do virtual schooling, before my last workday.
• 19:01
  Hannah: Um, and that was a very surreal time.
• 19:04
  Hannah: The whole world was a surreal experience in March, April, May 2020.
• 19:09
  Hannah: But that meant that on May 22nd, when I said goodbye to medicine, it felt like I'm also saying hello.
• 19:16
  Hannah: So my children unfettered, unpressured, unrestrained, for the first time ever, because we'd had them so young and so early in our training.
• 19:25
  Hannah: I was ready to say goodbye to medicine for the ill feelings really about the profession, but just wholeheartedly thrilled about the prospect of being a mother and a wife and homemaker and a human that had time for my own pursuits in a way that I never had before.
• 19:45
  Dawn: When we're recording this, it's almost May 2023.
• 19:49
  Dawn: After that initial period, and the uncertainty of COVID, And the time when hardly anybody was doing their regular elective type medicine.
• 20:00
  Dawn: When did you decide that you were going to add back an aspect of medicine to your work life balance?
• 20:08
  Dawn: Because I know that you do do some practice now.
• 20:11
  Dawn: So describe that to us.
• 20:14
  Hannah: So this was not premeditated at all.
• 20:16
  Hannah: But since I had started the breastfeeding medicine program at Arkansas Children's, I had established somewhat of a reputation in town of being knowledgeable in this topic.
• 20:25
  Hannah: And, there were quite a few.
• 20:28
  Hannah: People who would cold call me who had heard about me and gotten my contact information and say, please, I'm desperate.
• 20:35
  Hannah: I need help.
• 20:36
  Hannah: Can you please help me?
• 20:37
  Hannah: And I was happy to, because, it's fun to help people and I love babies and I love moms and, I have the knowledge base.
• 20:44
  Hannah: And so I was more than happy to just answer their questions, whether it be phone or text or email.
• 20:50
  Hannah: I had a handful of moms, most of them medical professionals themselves.
• 20:54
  Hannah: And so my husband looked at me as I'm texting one of these ladies during dinner one night and said, this is happening often enough that number one.
• 21:04
  Hannah: You need to be insured.
• 21:06
  Hannah: And number two, you deserve to be compensated.
• 21:09
  Hannah: So you can either tell these moms that they need to find help somewhere else that's official.
• 21:15
  Hannah: Or turn it into something if you want to, if you enjoy it, let's do something.
• 21:19
  Hannah: And I thought, well, we don't need to do that.
• 21:24
  Hannah: And, uh, I'm not sure why I was hesitant.
• 21:26
  Hannah: Maybe it just felt like it felt imposing to start a business from scratch.
• 21:29
  Hannah: I didn't know the first thing about setting up a PLLC and all of the.
• 21:34
  Hannah: Fancy tax stuff and business licenses and how it would go about getting insured.
• 21:38
  Hannah: And that all felt imposing.
• 21:40
  Hannah: And so I sort of just dismissed him, but again, he's always a guy full of great ideas.
• 21:43
  Hannah: And so that fall, we were on vacation visiting my parents, and, he said, let's buy a book on how to start a DPC, direct primary care, and I read that, and I quickly realized I do not want to do direct primary care because, Appropriately so doctors are beholden to their patients, you know, especially for a child if they need a well checkup doctor has to be available if they have a fever or need vaccines or whatever doctor has to be available.
• 22:07
  Hannah: And I didn't want that I was ready for this season of my life to be very specifically, I'm beholden to my family, and nobody else.
• 22:14
  Hannah: So that's when we realized, you know, maybe we just do strictly breastfeeding.
• 22:18
  Hannah: And so if they need breastfeeding help, then I can be their doctor.
• 22:21
  Hannah: And if I'm in Germany visiting my extended family, then I can just say.
• 22:28
  Hannah: Here's some other lactation consultants you can see, but don't have to feel obligated.
• 22:31
  Hannah: And I have the freedom to travel or the freedom to be too busy with my own children that I don't have to say yes.
• 22:37
  Hannah: And so we started researching the business side of that.
• 22:40
  Hannah: Fall of 2020, and open doors March 2021, open doors figuratively because I don't have an office building.
• 22:48
  Hannah: So my overhead is very low.
• 22:49
  Hannah: I see patients in their homes.
• 22:51
  Hannah: The mom and the baby are both my patient.
• 22:54
  Hannah: The M.
• 22:54
  Hannah: D.
• 22:54
  Hannah: license allows me to treat medically, and then the IBCLC, really just gives me street cred in terms of breastfeeding, uh, the physician specific breastfeeding training I've done is far more applicable to what I do now than the sort of nurse level IBCLC, but yeah, so I go to their homes, spend about two hours, um, which is, novel in medicine, you know, Dr.
• 23:17
  Hannah: McKill to have actual time to listen completely and explain fully.
• 23:22
  Hannah: And, the beauty of home visits is I can work with the resources they have.
• 23:26
  Hannah: If other family members are present, or I can see the lack of resources that they have and try to fill in gaps.
• 23:32
  Hannah: And there's just no rush whatsoever.
• 23:34
  Hannah: And then as part of the home visit, I include a week of unlimited phone and text conversation, because especially with feeding a brand new newborn, some things I can solve with a snap of the fingers, you know, I can reposition or I can re educate, um, but other things are, well, things just change minute to minute, hour to hour with a newborn, and so I find that that unrestricted direct contact between patient and me makes me feel better and helps solve problems quicker for mom and baby.
• 24:06
  Hannah: And these are all things that I could not do in traditional medicine where they call and have to get through voice jail to reach a receptionist who has no idea who I am personally or what I prefer professionally.
• 24:18
  Hannah: And, all of those barriers just felt like, walls between.
• 24:24
  Hannah: Me a human who has the skill and expertise to help my patients who are human and just desperately want somebody that can't reach them in a reasonable time.
• 24:33
  Hannah: Um, so it's the most gratifying medicine I've been able to practice because, there are no rules and there are no barriers.
• 24:43
  Hannah: It's wonderful.
• 24:44
  Hannah: And it's on an incredibly part time basis, I think the most I've ever seen is four patients in a week.
• 24:49
  Hannah: And that sounds.
• 24:51
  Hannah: tiny because I used to see four patients in 40 minutes in pediatrics.
• 24:55
  Hannah: But the amount of time I spend with each of these families is obviously much more substantial than that.
• 25:01
  Hannah: There are weeks that I go without seeing any patients, which I'm also fine with because my plate is plentiful with homeschooling for children and driving them around and managing my household, which is the number one job I want to have.
• 25:12
  Hannah: So, the breastfeeding practice feels like.
• 25:15
  Hannah: The perfect thing that utilizes my expertise, keeps me professionally satisfied in a way that I have just never felt a single lack having walked away from traditional medicine and yet, does not interfere at all with the life I want to live with my kids.
• 25:32
  Dawn: Sounds wonderful.
• 25:34
  Hannah: Thank you.
• 25:35
  Dawn: The one thing that I know you mentioned early on was financials and having loans, having debt, and I wondered how you've been able to navigate any financial insecurities, financial uncertainties.
• 25:53
  Dawn: So how has that gone for you guys?
• 25:56
  Hannah: Because we had already had to do a giant squeeze for me to cut to part time, we had already sort of re evaluated finances to make that cut.
• 26:04
  Hannah: It wasn't too huge of a leap to go to not working at all because of the private school tuition swap.
• 26:11
  Hannah: Things that we cut were, I was previously paying my loans off around 3, 500 a month and we dropped it down to 900.
• 26:19
  Hannah: We initially sort of wanted rid of it as soon as possible and then realized, is that the most important thing?
• 26:24
  Hannah: And the answer was no.
• 26:25
  Hannah: Getting rid of the debt as fast as possible was not the most important thing.
• 26:29
  Hannah: Time with the children while they're young is the most important thing.
• 26:32
  Hannah: It was just so simple when you look at it like that, you know, Oh, I could forego 14 years of pediatrics to be home with my children.
• 26:38
  Hannah: And I don't know that I will ever go back to traditional medicine, especially after I've tasted this type of medical practice where I have the time and direct access to my patients, but I could, I have the freedom to do so if I want to.
• 26:50
  Hannah: So back to the finances, we realized having time with children while they're in our household is the biggest priority, so let's figure out what it takes.
• 26:58
  Hannah: And for us non negotiables, we're contributing to retirement because we have a great matching program here at ACH.
• 27:04
  Hannah: And tithing 10% to church.
• 27:06
  Hannah: And so beyond that, we just decided, well, we will save for, we sort of had always done this, save for vacations in advance.
• 27:13
  Hannah: And so when we have enough in our own personal vacation funds, then we will spend it.
• 27:18
  Hannah: But we won't spend frivolously.
• 27:21
  Hannah: We spend very little frivolous money.
• 27:22
  Hannah: We don't eat out very often and we, try to be budget conscious on most things we do in life.
• 27:29
  Hannah: We do travel to Europe, but it makes it a lot more affordable because my husband's family lives there.
• 27:32
  Hannah: And so we're able to go crash in their house and then just take the train.
• 27:36
  Hannah: We always must be conscientious of our budget.
• 27:39
  Hannah: Funds are not unlimited, but that is such a worthwhile price to pay for feeling like my time budget has far more capacity for the people who are important to me.
• 27:50
  Dawn: So many people forget that that time is, it's not renewable I'm hearing that you were just very in tune with your values and realizing what is the most important thing.
• 28:02
  Dawn: Then you figured out your non negotiables, And then you figured out how to cut back on the other areas and how to be creative.
• 28:11
  Dawn: In our last bit of time together, what I'd really like to know is what advice you would give someone who finds themselves in those buzzwords that you said in the beginning, the overwhelm, the figuring out That they don't have margins that they are giving their children the leftovers.
• 28:32
  Dawn: What advice would you give to that person?
• 28:34
  Hannah: Basically identify your priorities, shift that into the number one spot and be willing to compromise, change, sacrifice, give up literally anything else in order to make your identified number one, your actual number one.
• 28:51
  Hannah: I mean, we considered moving houses, moving states, quitting my job, going to public school, we considered everything, and then analyzed it with the singular focus of, does this accomplish our goal of giving Hannah more time with her children?
• 29:09
  Hannah: And so once you distill it down that simply, it's easy to weed out the deceptive solutions that feel like they might.
• 29:18
  Hannah: Solve the problem, but don't actually, for instance, we continued, I keep working and we send them to public school and that gives us more financial margin.
• 29:26
  Hannah: And so we feel less pressure financially.
• 29:29
  Hannah: And as soon as we looked at it through the lens of, is this accomplishing the goal is clearly no, that does not give me more time with the children.
• 29:36
  Hannah: It eases the separate stress that is not the main stressor.
• 29:39
  Hannah: So sit down, evaluate your priorities.
• 29:44
  Hannah: Be willing to compromise everything else except for the number one and don't be afraid of what that looks like because if you are truly emphasizing that which is most valuable to you, you will get the greatest reward even if you let go of things that are also important to you.
• 30:00
  Dawn: Wonderful advice.
• 30:02
  Dawn: Thank you.
• 30:03
  Dawn: Hannah, can you please tell us where we can find you if we want to look you up?
• 30:09
  Hannah: Sure.
• 30:10
  Hannah: My breastfeeding medicine practice is just called Hannah Reno MD.
• 30:14
  Hannah: And so I have a Facebook page for that.
• 30:16
  Hannah: I offer a prenatal breastfeeding course, that's in a group format virtually for anybody anywhere in the world.
• 30:22
  Hannah: We've had people participating from Europe and Japan and all over the United States.
• 30:26
  Hannah: And also do prenatal one on one consultations for women wanting to talk about breastfeeding.
• 30:31
  Hannah: And then I do postnatal care as well, obviously locally here in Arkansas.
• 30:36
  Hannah: And a little bit of coaching on an individual basis.
• 30:39
  Hannah: If outside the state of Arkansas, because I'm not able to practice medicine beyond, beyond our borders.
• 30:43
  Hannah: So that is Hannah Renaud, MD on Facebook and, Lactation Conversations is the name of the breastfeeding course.
• 30:49
  Hannah: And so you can find me at Lactation Conversations on Instagram and, um, not very active on Twitter.
• 30:55
  Hannah: But those are the places you can find me.
• 30:57
  Dawn: We share a disdain for Twitter.
• 31:01
  Dawn: Okay, thank you.
• 31:03
  Hannah: yes, thank you.
• 31:05
  Okay.
• 31:05
  That was great.
• 31:06
  I think a lot of us can identify with Hannah's limiting beliefs and thought processes and the evolution that she went through on her.
• 31:17
  Journey of the last few years.
• 31:19
  Here are my takeaway points from our conversation.
• 31:23
  Number one.
• 31:24
  Hannah experienced lots of warning signs on her path to leaning out her feelings of being on a hamster wheel, resenting her patients, their classic signs of depersonalization that we tend to resort to when we're feeling burned out.
• 31:39
  My tip is to pay attention to your body and what is happening around you?
• 31:44
  The messages that you're being sent about where you're headed.
• 31:48
  Number two.
• 31:50
  I was fascinated by the story of Hannah concocting, her fifth baby idea while she was on a conference.
• 31:57
  And it was a justification in her mind for wanting to take that prolonged period of time off.
• 32:04
  And the tip here is to discuss your thoughts with others.
• 32:07
  Open up.
• 32:08
  Don't keep it all to yourself.
• 32:10
  Because you aren't able to see your own blind spots.
• 32:14
  Hannah waited at least a month to talk to her husband about this idea.
• 32:18
  It took some deep conversations with him, for her to realize her blind spot, what she really wanted was time away from clinical medicine or a prolonged period of time off, not necessarily a fifth baby.
• 32:34
  Number three.
• 32:35
  When you're looking at.
• 32:36
  Doing something difficult.
• 32:38
  Keep your laser focus on your why and your top priority.
• 32:43
  Hannah and her family were relentless in their brainstorming and keeping the number one focus of.
• 32:49
  Getting more time with their children in all of their different decisions, including their financial ones.
• 32:56
  So my parting question to you today is what is your number one priority right now?
• 33:04
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 33:07
  If you like what you hear, please leave a review for this podcast on iTunes or Spotify.
• 33:12
  So other people needing this kind of community and inspiration can find it easier.
• 33:18
  Also, you can support this podcast and learn more about the ideas presented by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance.
• 33:30
  Lastly, if you want more information about working with me.
• 33:34
  Please visit my website@wwwdotpracticebalance.com.