Is there space for a little one? Attending the BGS Spring Meeting as a new parent

Dr Sarah True is an ST5 geriatric medicine registrar in the West Midlands, having recently returned to clinical practice following parental leave. She is currently the British Geriatrics Society trainee representative for workforce.

When the BGS Autumn Meeting was held in Birmingham in November 2023 at a venue a shorter commute than most hospitals in the deanery, I was keen to attend. However, being very pregnant with just a week before my due date, I felt it was probably a sensible decision to give it a miss. Instead, I set myself what felt like an ambitious task of attending the Spring 2024 meeting at the same venue instead… with a 5-month-old baby in tow. I was lucky enough to be invited along to present some of the work I had contributed to as the trainee representative on the BGS Workforce Committee. The invitation was very ‘no pressure’ but also supportive and I was encouraged to have a think about how we could make it work, and I am so glad that I did.

There were some practical things to consider when attending either with or without my little one. Do I bring her or leave her at home? If I do bring her, who will hold her whilst I do my presentation? Where do I feed her and what do I do with all her stuff? If I don’t bring her, how long can I be away? 

In the end, as with many things in geriatric medicine, we decided on a blended approach. On day one, my presentation slot was early morning, so I would feed my daughter at home, come along to the conference by myself and head back at the time she would be due her next feed. This worked well after discussing it with the conference team beforehand to ensure there would be a space available to me to ‘pump’ if required. So, I packed up my bag with a pump and a cool bag, found something presentable to wear and tried to dust off the part of my brain I would need for talking to grown-ups. The day went really well, and all my nerves soon faded away once I was in the room with my BGS colleagues, some of whom I was finally meeting in real life after working together for many years online. When I stood on the podium and started talking about the data I had so enjoyed working on what felt like a lifetime ago, I was quite surprised to hear my old self finding her way out from the new parent bubble.

With day one done, we were on to the next challenge on day two – bringing baby with me! This actually needed less work than coming on my own, but it did help that I had familiarised myself with the venue the day before and there were learning points to bring forward to day two. Once again, I had been in contact with the conference team beforehand who were incredibly helpful and agreed to allow my (non-medical) husband access to the conference to bring baby in to me and also arranged an additional parking pass so that they could come and go, and I could stay to enjoy the conference a little longer. In reality, I actually saw very little of my baby during her visit. She spent most of her time being passed around and cooed over by my colleagues. It surprised me how touched I was to see her being held by some of the BGS colleagues who had supported me during my pregnancy and empowered me to continue engaging in this professional world when my home world had changed so much in the last few months. I even managed to capture a photo of Dr Arora, our now President Elect but who has also been my clinical supervisor and chair of the Workforce Committee, meeting my baby for the first time.