'My children showed me what to do' — Dr. Suzanne Crowe on raising kids after loss

Dr Suzanne Crowe doesn’t even try to separate being a doctor from being a parent anymore. The president of the Irish medical council is a paediatric intensive care doctor and a busy mother. And she admits that sometimes taking care of extremely sick children has led to her feeling a strong need to check in with her own children. “I have rung home on occasion to just check everyone’s ok. They’re kind of used to that”.“I do sometimes think did medicine shape my parenting, or did parenting shape the brand of medicine that I do”, she says. “They’re inextricable”.On the latest episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast Crowe explains what it’s like to parent four very different people and shares whether being a doctor proved a help or a hindrance in raising her family. “They did get a lot of ‘it’s grand. It’s a scrape’, she says. “Apparently I’m famous for saying “have a glass of water and go to bed”.In her role as a doctor, Crowe cares for children and families going though extremely difficult times. Sadly she’s no stranger to this on a personal level, having lost her baby daughter Beatrice while on holiday in France.“She’d be 15 now”, Crowe explains. “She was born very premature. She was born at 23 weeks on holidays in France – a nightmare holiday. She lived for 19 days and she passed away in France. It’s was an absolutely awful experience”.Crowe shares how she keeps the memory of her daughter alive, and explains how the loss of her daughter while away from home has given her an understanding in her professional life, of parents and families living in Ireland whose first language may not be English.In 2019 Crowe had to deal with the unthinkable again when her husband Barry died. “It certainly changed my parenting. You never get over it,” she says. “I remember the day he died and at one stage I lay down on the floor in the hall sobbing, and just completely lost…at one point I must have stopped and opened my eyes. And I saw the faces of my children and they were terrified. And you know, the one person that was left for them was clearly losing the plot. I just realised I couldn’t do that to them. I would have to actually just sort this out and help them.”She talks about how she coped in the days that followed her husband’s death and how her children helped her get through the days and weeks that followed.Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.