Holding the Line, Holding a Life

Brittany Garza, DO

Being pregnant in the first trimester while working as an emergency department physician feels like living in two opposing realities at once. In one moment, I’m managing chaos—chest pain, trauma activations, sepsis alerts—moving fast, thinking clearly, holding space for other people’s emergencies. 

In the next, I’m acutely aware of my own body: the nausea that comes in waves between patients, the bone-deep fatigue that no amount of coffee can touch, the quiet anxiety that hums beneath everything. The first trimester is largely invisible to the outside world, yet internally it is consuming, and practicing emergency medicine leaves little room to acknowledge vulnerability when you’re expected to be the steady one.

There’s a strange irony in caring for patients while carrying a life that still feels fragile and uncertain. I can recite statistics, reassure others, and make evidence-based decisions all shift long—yet when it comes to my own pregnancy, logic doesn’t always quiet the fear. I wash my hands obsessively, avoid exposures, and silently negotiate with my body to cooperate for just a few more hours. Between traumas and triage notes, there’s a constant internal check-in: Is the nausea worse? Am I cramping? Did I drink enough water? It’s a balance between hyper-awareness and forced compartmentalization, because the department does not slow down for hormones or hope.

And yet, there is meaning in this overlap. Being pregnant has softened something in me—made me more attuned to uncertainty, more compassionate with fear, more respectful of how much people carry into the ED unseen. It reminds me that strength doesn’t always look like endurance; sometimes it’s simply showing up, doing your job, and trusting that your body and your calling can coexist, even when both demand so much.