Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE, FAAP

Work-Life Balance Issues For Working Parents.

Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE, FAAP, comes on the show to discuss the difficult balance so many parents struggle with when choosing to work while raising their children.

Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE, FAAP is a board certified pediatrician, blogger, freelance journalist, and mother to 2 young boys. Dr. Swanson believes practicing physicians have an ethical duty to move science forward by telling their stories and sharing opinions online. She maintains a busy pediatric practice and writes Seattle Mama Doc blog, the first pediatrician-authored blog for a major Children's hospital As a blogger, she shares things she has learned in med school and in practice, but also things she learns at home while raising her boys. She interprets research and hopes to dispel myth. Like so many parents, she struggles with work-life-balance and her choice to work while raising her children. Seattle Mama Doc caters to one principle: parents just want to do what is right. The desperate love we have for our children can shock us into good and sometimes bad decisions. Dr Swanson believes parents search for and sincerely desire simple answers to the How-What-Why-Who of parenting, the essence of doing right for their children. Often it’s not a simple, isolated situation, or one as complicated as it may feel. And, the abundance of online noise invokes fear in all of us when making decisions for our children. Dr Swanson tells her story without provoking fear. From dog food, to Tylenol, to getting a baby to sleep, she provides a voice for the struggle so many of us feel when stuck in a moment of indecision.

Melanie Cole, M.S.

11 / 10 / 2010