- Welcome to the internet, my life is a lie.
I am miniature size.
I love my internet friends.
What?
Incredible.
Hey, y'all welcome back.
I'm Mama Doctor Jones, a board certified OB-GYN,
a mom to four and today is a less learny video.
Today, we're going through my old Instagram posts.
Some of the first Instagram posts I made
after I created the online persona Mama Doctor Jones.
I'm going to start with the first picture.
I find this picture really ironic
because I wasn't even using a pager at this time.
I had this picture leftover from when I was in residency.
Again, I had just gotten out of residency a few months ago,
and I had started using my cell phone instead
of a pager when I got into private practice.
So I guess I just didn't know what to post
or like what I wanted to talk about
but here you go, Pager life.
Welcome to the internet, my life is a lie.
Oh, I love this picture.
This is a photo that one of my patients sent me
and has given me permission to share.
And it was one of the first babies I delivered
after helping someone with infertility.
And I was also very pregnant with Milo in this picture.
And I just love this photo,
her husband is a photographer he captured it
and they gave it to me framed.
Something about this is just,
this captures what I love about delivering babies.
It's exhausting.
It is frustrating.
My smile and the baby's face
and seeing mom for the first time.
This is just, I'm going to get emotional
talking about it.
I just love this photo so much.
So I won't say your name, but thank you to the sweet patient
who gave it to me.
It's still one of my most treasured photos
of me doing this job that I love.
So this is a video and I think when I posted it,
I didn't make it clear that it's like my baby,
but this is one of my twins being born.
We didn't know the sex of the babies when they were born.
Those are my favorite deliveries, it's so much fun.
We did choose to find out the sex of the babies
when we had the boys, just for other reasons, I could see
on ultrasound, but with the girls, I tried to
keep my eyes closed and never looked,
and it was super fun.
This is them showing me Amelia over the curtain.
And actually they left the curtain down, which I love
that I love when I can do that for my patients as well.
From a patient perspective, with the curtain down
you can't see anything surgical.
You can just see the baby.
- [Male] Look, Mom.
- [Female] A girl.
(people laughing)
- Another pager picture.
What is going on?
I must just, I don't know.
Maybe I was just like running out of ideas
and decided to post everything from residency
on this Instagram.
Oh, this is when I found out that I passed
my written board exams.
We take this as soon as we finish residency
and it took many months for me to get the results back
which honestly doesn't make any sense, right?
If I take this in like May or June
and I didn't get the results back until September
but it's a test we all take on the same day
and it's computerized and it's multiple choice.
Why the heck does it take that long to get results?
I don't understand, but there you go.
I passed my written board exam.
I remember that day, like yesterday.
I posted this picture talking about residency
and just how exhausting it can be.
This point in this picture, I had two
probably one and a half or two year olds.
And I was working nights and I was exhausted
after working five or six nights in a row.
And I still wanted to spend time with my babies
when I got off that week.
So we went to the park and my husband snapped this picture
of me falling asleep on the slide.
So I hope that I have gotten a little bit better
about self care since then, but you know
you do what you have to do when you're a mom
in a surgical residency program.
And at least I was there in spirit.
Scrubbing in for a surgery on call.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, I have to share those pictures, so
I posted this photo,
and it's a card that says, Oh, hello.
But I covered up the "O" and the exclamation point
with the stuff we used to do a pap smear.
And I put the little pap test stuff next to it.
And I thought this was like the most witty
hilarious thing that I had ever posted on the internet
because it looks like it says, Oh, hell.
Like, oh hell, it's pap smear time again.
And I was so disappointed that the engagement
on this photo was so low at the time.
I was like, so mad because I thought nobody understands me.
Nobody gets my jokes.
I am just a failure at the internet.
And obviously my goal in the internet
is not just to be humorous, but I love humor.
And the way to my heart is to tell me I'm funny.
And I was so disappointed
that this post wasn't found to be absolutely hilarious
even though looking back
I'm like, I mean, it's funny, but it's not that funny.
Oh, okay.
This one is good.
I will tell this story.
We need to do a video together.
I started my Instagram because I loved following her.
And I wanted to do something educational like she was doing.
And so I messaged her and said like, "Hey
I'm going to start this professional Instagram.
And do you have any tips or whatever?"
And she was like, "yeah
be engaged, show up consistently, blah, blah, blah."
And at the time I thought, well, that wasn't very helpful.
But now in hindsight, I realized she probably got
like a hundred messages a day asking that question.
Like, you just can't have a long conversation with everyone.
But, at the time I was living in College Station, Texas
which is where Texas A&M is.
And it's about an hour from Austin, Texas
which is where we're at now.
And I knew that Natalie lived there.
And so she was like, "Hey
I'm coming to speak at the university.
You wanna get dinner?"
And I was like, "Oh my gosh, yes".
I would love to meet an internet celebrity.
So we met up for dinner and then I was like, "Hey
by the way, I wanna come watch you speak."
And so we got there and she was like
"why don't you just come up and do the Q&A panel with me?"
And I was like, Oh my gosh, what is happening?
And I just felt like, Oh
I'm in this like wonderful presence of a celebrity.
I still think of her that way, by the way.
She has a YouTube channel too.
Dr. Natalie Crawford, she's a reproductive endocrinology
and infertility doctor, but more importantly
she's now very dear friend of mine.
And so looking back at this picture
which was the first day we met, that day we went to dinner
and then I went to a panel with her is just so nostalgic.
I love my internet friends.
I love my real life friends so much too,
but it's crazy that I can look back
at this picture and remember like how weird it was
that I was meeting someone from the internet.
And now she's just like another friend.
This picture I love because every time
I post a photo of me
and I'm with like Natalie in the last picture,
if you look at it, I have on very tall pumps
and she's got on flats.
I am miniature size.
I'm only 5'2".
And so I operate standing on a step stool
because otherwise the person I'm operating with
can't reach the patient cause they're way down low.
For some reason, all of you always think
I'm going to be tall.
And every time someone comes up to me
out in public and person, I am told like, Oh my gosh
I almost didn't recognize you
'cause I expected you to be bigger.
I am short.
I'm not like super thin tiny.
I'm just like short.
I'm not a tall person.
I'm a small person.
Oh, this is an interesting picture.
I don't actually know that I took this picture.
This is either a really old picture that I took
or I found this on the internet somewhere.
But you can see all the knotting
of those two umbilical cords.
This is what happens with mono mono or monochorionic twins.
Twins who share one sac and one placenta
because they don't have a separation.
So these are the most high-risk form of twins
because of this.
They can get their cords entangled,
and that can cause the blood circulation to get cut off.
It's really crazy because you know, this photo
when these babies were born, and again, I can't remember
if this was an actual baby set that I delivered
or I got this from the internet
but I've definitely seen cords that look like this.
And it just rocks my world
when I see babies come out and they have cords
that look like that, and they're both fine.
It's incredible.
It's truly incredible.
God bless Wharton's jelly.
That's what lines the cords to help them
not be so compressible.
Aww, I still have this.
Milo must have been still in diapers.
My now four-year-old.
But this is a tiny, tiny, extremely premature baby diaper
and I still have it.
Let me find it.
Is this not adorable?
Look how small that is.
Can you imagine a baby that small?
This is for babies born at very early
gestational ages, like 23, 24 weeks.
It's just amazing.
I mean, I've delivered more babies than I can count
that were this tiny and putting diapers on them.
Obviously I don't put diapers on them, but going to see them
in the NICU and watching their neonatal nurses
or doctors change their diaper
in these teeny tiny diapers is incredible.
I don't know.
I just, it rocks my world every time.
Here's the credit card.
Okay, that's the size of a credit card.
What?
Incredible.
I know, I love it.
It blows my mind and seeing the baby's actually that small
it's just mind-blowing.
Also scary, but mind-blowing.
I have been recording for a long time already
and we haven't gotten very far.
We can try to go faster.
This was me and it's a throwback picture
because apparently when I first started posting
on Instagram, all I did was post really old photos
but that's when I was 31 weeks pregnant with my twins.
Okay, we must talk about this.
So clearly, it was Christmas time
because I have a Santa shirt on.
I found that shirt, I believe at Walmart or Target.
And it matched my maroon scrubs very well.
I loved it because it said "Don't Stop Believing"
which hilarious, right?
It's from the Journey song
but nobody appreciated it nearly as much as me
both, how beautifully it matched my maroon
and gray scrub set
and just the utter loveliness
of using "Don't Stop Believing" on Santa.
I mean, I can't get over it.
I still love it.
It's so perfect.
Oh, this was one of the first pictures I ever posted
and talked about vaccines that I got
like an actual large amount of hate for.
And I posted it because I took Milo
to get his childhood vaccines
and we wanted all of them because vaccines make us grumpy
but not as grumpy as polio.
And I want all the vaccines for my child
on the schedule that they're studied
and found to be safe on.
And it went semi viral, not what I would consider viral now
but for the time when I just had a handful
of followers and people were so angry.
That was like my first introduction
to outrage on the internet and the anti-vaccine community.
So I'm now appreciative of having that experience
because I feel like I understand how to handle
it a little bit better,
how to be more empathetic and understanding.
But at the time it was just shocking
and scary and I didn't know how to handle it.
I had to private my account for several days.
It was insane, but.
Isn't he so cute.
Look at Milo.
He was so fat and blonde and just, Oh my gosh
it was such a cute little baby.
Again with the throwback pictures, I swear.
I should have just gone through my residency
Instagram at this rate.
So this is a picture that's a throwback
to when I was a resident and I was working
with one of my level below me people, her name's Katie.
She's wonderful.
If you live in Waco, Texas, she's an amazing OB-GYN.
Go see her.
And she and I were doing crafts in our downtime.
And so it's the middle of the night.
I'm on probably night four of five or something.
We worked five nights in a row
like 13 hour shifts as upper-level residents.
And we worked six nights in a row
for a month at a time as interns
which was bananas, working six night shifts
that are basically 6:00 PM to like 9:00 AM is bananas.
I am so happy I never have to do that again,
but we were making socks for my twins.
So in the next picture, Oh my gosh, they were so cute.
Look at my babies.
So I just love that this kind of shows
like how you can mix mom-ing and medicine.
I mean, obviously if there's work to be done at work
I need to be doing work.
And I don't often have time to just have downtime.
But when you work long shifts like that
you have ebbs and flows.
So I cut out little felt dinosaurs
and sewed them dinosaur shirts and made them dinosaur socks.
Oh my gosh, they were so cute.
They're still so cute, but I just can't get over it.
I want to show this picture
because this was a point where I made a very distinct shift
in my online presence.
And it's a little different here than it is on Instagram.
But at this time on Instagram,
I believe it was like February or March of 2018.
I made a very calculated decision
to start sharing more family focused content
and not just medical content.
And here's the reason.
And maybe I should do a little more of this on YouTube too,
I don't know.
But I would say things like, you know
get your vaccines in pregnancy or get your kids vaccinated
or go to your prenatal appointments or whatever.
And everybody would say, yeah, do that,
It's so great.
And I thought, you know, I don't know that I'm reaching
like the actual people that need to hear this.
I need to be a mom blogger who happens to be a doctor.
And that has always kind of been my goal
on Instagram and maybe a little less so here
but I do try to occasionally share a little bit of my life
because I feel like I want to
be the person that's like your friend
who you just go to coffee with and you happen to talk
about pap smears because she's a gynecologist.
Like that's what I want to be on the internet.
I want to speak to people who actually need the information,
not to people who already have it.
Although I really love all the people who follow me,
who are in medicine, who want to go into medicine,
who, you know, like what I do as a doctor,
I really try to focus my Instagram presence
to be a mom blogger, and that was intentional.
And I think it works.
I love the very engaged and wonderful community
that I have there.
I feel like we have great conversations
and that it allows me to do really good work.
And I appreciate it.
So if you've been following me on Instagram
for a long time, thank you.
I really truly appreciate it.
That's such a fun place for me to share information.
Sometimes, now it gets a little overwhelming sometimes
because people are very mean.
I was listening to Curtis Connor talk
the other day about how if you worked
like, you know, in retail it would never be like this.
So he's like, I have a mustache and people are always like,
you should shave your mustache off, it's ugly.
And they're often really mean about it on the internet.
People do that to me too.
Comments, like your eyebrows are weird
and they make your face look weird.
And people are always commenting
on my teeth being crooked, which I understand.
I know that, I can see them.
I have a dental phobia and I just don't care enough
to get my teeth straightened.
And people are often really mean about it.
And I'm thinking like, this doesn't affect you at all.
But if I was checking you out at the grocery store
and you said something like that to me
it would be totally unacceptable.
So why is it acceptable to comment meanly
on people's appearances in the comment section
of YouTube video?
Like, I'm not here to look nice for you.
I mean, sometimes I put on makeup for you
and you're welcome, but also, I'm here to share information
with you and occasionally share my life with you.
So it's really weird to think about it.
Like it doesn't happen in my office.
Nobody says that to me in my clinic.
And I typically look way worse
in my clinic than I do online.
So I don't know.
Anyway, that was just a thought I have.
So I got really derailed.
So this picture is in New Zealand
when I had made a focused effort to start sharing more
about my family.
We were taking a trip to New Zealand.
This is hiking Castle Hill
and my daughter Amelia overlooking
off of one of the rock ledges.
That was a really, really fun trip.
We love New Zealand.
I've talked about this many times before
and it's beautiful.
This is the last one I'm going to share,
but this was Milo when he was about 18-months-old
and he broke his leg.
He was standing, we were at a restaurant
that had a merry-go-round outside
and he was standing there and he was 18 months.
So he had just learned to walk not too long ago
and he was holding on.
And one of the bigger girls started to push it a little bit.
Very slowly.
They weren't trying to make them fall.
They weren't being mean to him.
It wasn't their fault, but they started to move it.
And he, being a baby, instead of letting go,
he just held onto the merry-go-round.
And so his upper body kind of went with it and twisted
but his feet stayed planted
and he just twisted himself into a spiral leg fracture.
I knew immediately something was wrong because that kid,
you can tell by his chubby cheeks, loved to eat
as a toddler and he wouldn't eat his dinner.
He was hysterical.
So we took him to the doctor.
They did an x-ray.
He wouldn't put any weight on his leg.
He wouldn't walk or do anything.
And they said, Nope, there's not a fracture.
And I was like, something is wrong with this kid's leg.
He won't put any weight on it.
He's still not happy.
And so they said, well, come back
if he's still not putting weight on it.
Several days later, still not putting weight on it.
So they went ahead and casted it.
And then sure enough, when he got his cast off,
the follow-up x-ray showed his little healing fracture.
So they're hard to see sometimes on an x-ray, but yeah
that's just an interesting story
about how my 18 month old broke his leg
and it was disgusting having an 18 month old in a cast.
I think I have another picture of it right here.
So he just toddled around
on his little green cast for the whole time he had it.
Because of where it's at, up to his thigh,
when he sat in his high chair to eat,
any food he dropped went directly into the cast.
Disgusting.
That was fun and stinky when he got it off.
So we made it through a little less
than my first year on the internet.
Maybe we'll go faster next time.
I hope that you enjoyed this little get to know me
Instagram review a little bit.
I will see you next Monday.
If you want to watch another video,
I will link one in a playlist over there.
I'm going to commit over there.
I'm going to link it over there.
If you wanna subscribe, I'd love to have you.
Bye.