74. Part 1 | Choosing Her Own Way: Dr. Alexandra Stockwell on Motherhood, Marriage, and the Life She Built Beyond the Script

This one’s for the woman navigating the messy middle of ambition and alignment.

In this deeply personal conversation, I sat down with Dr. Alexandra Stockwell, physician, intimacy coach, mother of four, and one of my own mentors, to talk about what happens when your identity evolves in ways you didn’t plan for… but needed.

She shares what it meant to trade hospital hallways for nesting at home, how being visibly pregnant in med school almost made her fear expulsion, and why a vasectomy reversal after training wasn’t just about adding more kids but about honoring the full, wild truth of their family story.

Together we unpack:

• The invisible shifts that happen when you go from doctor to mother—and how to stay rooted in yourself through it
• What it looks like to build a life that’s deeply aligned, even if it doesn’t follow a traditional timeline
• The marriage lessons that unfolded through sleep deprivation, separate bedrooms, and fourth-year rotations with a baby
• Why her childcare choices were more about humanity than perfection and how that changed how she led at home

Dr. Alexandra Stockwell moved through uncertainty with curiosity, not panic - slowing down, shifting gears, and questioning the “shoulds” she once believed.

If you’ve ever felt torn between your professional identity and the softness of early motherhood or wondered how to stay whole while navigating both, this episode is a reminder that it’s okay to rethink your timeline, honor your pace, and trust that an unconventional path can still lead to a deeply meaningful life.

✨ Press play to hear her story.

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Transcript

  Hey doc. I'm back with another interview with a very, very special guest, Dr. Alexandra Stockwell. She is a relationship and intimacy coach, and she is my relationship and intimacy coach and also my coaching mentor because she's A fabulous, amazing, well accomplished coach. And I couldn't think of anybody else to help me improve and grow and serve you the best way that I can.

So I am very, very excited to have her here because just like you, she is a physician mom and she has a story to tell. Let me tell you. So. Dr. Alexandra, welcome, and please tell the listeners more about you, how old your kids are, how many you have, and how long you've been married.  

Okay, well, thank you for that lovely introduction.

You and I have so many different ways of connecting with one another, and me being a guest on your podcast is an additional feather in our shared cap. So thank you, I'm really glad to be here.  And, yes. I have four children. They are 28. My daughter is engaged to be married in May. and then I have three sons who are 25, 19, and recently turned 13. 

And if you do the math and think of the spread, you may be a normal person and think I've had a few different marriages, and that is actually not at all the case. I've been married for 28 years. My husband is a physician. We met the first week of medical school.  And we had our first child just after my third year of medical school, and my second just before starting my internship, and actually decided we were done, went so far as to get a vasectomy.

And then after both of us were done with training and kind of reorganized our lives, We're like, no, actually, that's not the case, and this is just so funny to share here, but I had no idea that a vasectomy reversal was a thing. You know, it definitely wasn't part of either of our trainings or medical school, but anyway, it's not covered by insurance, but it is a thing.

And so he flew to Arizona where there's a practice, and all they do is vasectomy reversals,  and he came home, and  then we had two more children.  

I cannot believe I did not know that.  That is amazing because I was going to ask you why there was such a big spread and I thought it was just, you know, y'all just waited.

But come to find out, he had a vasectomy. I love that and I just want to pause and say any man who gets a vasectomy gets an extra tick from me because We have done enough, so it is the least that they can do. well, in all 

fairness, after he got the vasectomy and the vasectomy reversal,  he really laid down the law that he was not getting another vasectomy after that.

I think that's reasonable. 

Yes, I, I felt so too. So, um, but let me start a little bit further back knowing that we're talking about being a physician mom so I always wanted to be a mother  and I thought that I would get married and have children. I didn't have a particular number in mind. That's not the point, but that I would live a really meaningful life as a mother. And I thought I would probably. Not be a serial entrepreneur.

That's a trendy word, but like I have serial jobs because I was interested in so many different things. So I thought, well, maybe I'll run an import store, bringing in furniture from Indonesia for five years. And then I will work as a paralegal. And like, I didn't want to go back to school and get extensive meaningful degrees, but I thought, you know, and then maybe I'll be a nomad.

Like I, I thought I would change professions every. I don't know, 5 to 10 years. I didn't want to be a jack of all trades. I really valued competence and mastery. But I just had so many different interests. And when I thought about my professional life, there were so many things I didn't want to rule out.

And I didn't want to feel locked in and restricted. And  I also really wanted to have a family.  So I majored in Philosophy and Mathematics. I was not a pre med student. And then after college, When I was thinking about what I would do and the fact that I had not found a life partner.

I had relationships with various men and learned a lot of different things, but there was nobody that I thought I wouldn't get bored of after a few years. And so I just thought okay, that more home based path is not gonna be mine. So then I want to really Go all in on a kind of different sort of partnership, if you will, a partnership with medicine.

And I wasn't even sure if it was a whole big fantasy of mine because I personally had never been sick and I hadn't spent time in the hospital, so I started by getting a job as a phlebotomist because drawing blood, patients take you seriously even though it's an entry level position and I had actual interactions because I had a needle in my hand.

So I thought, okay, I'm going to go into medicine because  I want to do something that is meaningful and necessary and makes a difference for people. I want to do something that I would be good at and I really want to do something that is a path in which I will grow and constantly be learning things and not that I'll peak two years in and then just wait for my promotions or something like that.

So when I was clear, I wasn't going to have a family. and have my life sort of center around that. I went all in on medicine. I did all of my pre med prerequisites in 11 months and applied to medical school and was really ready to be totally kind of married to medicine, if you will. And the very first week, I met my husband and very quickly knew this was probably the man.

It took him a little while to figure out I was even flirting and that our first time together. I thought of it as a date. I took so long deciding what I would wear. He didn't even remember. He just was so fascinated by me. He, I think he was a little insecure romantically and was just like drawn to my soul.

Anyway, we, we navigated that and we got married. In our third year of medical school 

so yeah, I want to ask about that.  Was it ever a consideration that you should wait to get married and wait to have kids?  Talk me through how that went.

Well, I remember being on a friend's couch in Switzerland. It was night, everyone else had gone to bed and we kind of, like, good type A people planned it all out and we planned when we would get engaged and when we would get married and honestly, I really,  I don't remember thinking about waiting.

The only thing that comes to mind is that,  this is so funny to say, I think I better just, presence for anyone who's listening and not watching, that I am 56, I was born in 1968, the Sort of fertility range and when people have children was very very different growing up and so  for in the 70s and Early 80s I knew a few people who became mothers in their 40s and it was 100 percent not the norm and I had judgment about it.

My mother had judgment about it. And so I was very clear that I wanted to have my children in my twenties, which is so funny now because I have one in my twenties, one of my early thirties, one of my late thirties and one of my forties. And I am very happy with when I had my children, but I had a bunch of ideas as.

As young people do, I was, you know, a highly principled person with a lot of ideas and shoulds about my life, and one of them was to have children earlier, but I don't even know if that played in. I mean, both my husband and I did not go straight to medical school. We didn't take that long, we graduated and had a few years before going to medical school.

So, we got married at 28, even though it was, during medical school, and So this is a very long way of saying I really don't remember thinking about waiting. 

Got it. And I have to ask, what were y'all doing in Switzerland in the middle of medical school?  

Oh, well, that's an interesting story. So even before going to medical school, I attended a number of conferences for holistic medical doctors.

And I met a woman who was Swiss and she and I had this deep bond. And she ended up asking me to be her daughter's godmother and so I went to Switzerland and the first birth I ever attended was actually my goddaughter's birth in Switzerland at this, small holistic hospital. My husband's name is Rod, and he and I were not engaged, but we went together to Switzerland. It was December of the first year of medical school, so I could be there for her christening, 

, and I had worked in Switzerland, um, I worked in a little, hospital lab in Switzerland before I went to medical school, and so I was very glad to take Rod with me, and show him some of what my life had been before medicine, and. So that had us lying there figuring out the plans for our life.

You are just the most interesting person ever.  Okay, so you got married and you're like, Hey, I'm in my twenties. I have two years left. 

Let me have this child. That I definitely knew that no time was a good time. And while we have four children,  the first one, the planning was not chosen by us.  

Ah. 

So I'm very glad she came when she did, but I actually wouldn't have chosen it because, so I started medical school in September of 1993 and while in medical school, I knew one man who became a father.

He was a very traditional Christian man who took no time off when the baby was born and his wife was a stay at home mom and I never even saw the baby but , other than that, I knew nobody who was in medical school who was a parent. And so when I became pregnant, I actually, I  found out at the very end of my OBGYN rotation that I had conceived just before that rotation started. And so I did a lot of sleeping, but I thought it was because You know, I was doing 36 hour shifts.

This was before any of those laws were passed to restrict the hours. And so, you know, it made sense that I'd want to sleep. It was sort of intriguing that I would just sleep through dinner and sleep. I basically was in, in labor and delivery or sleeping those entire six weeks.  I began to realize it and I waited to do the pregnancy test when Rod and I would be together.

 But when I found out I was pregnant,  one of my very next thoughts was, Oh, I'm going to get kicked out of medical school.  Because  there were no medical students who had children besides this man I've just told you about.

And I was very clear I didn't want to have a baby and then two weeks later be full on with work. That was a non negotiable. I just wasn't going to do that. And so I had never seen it before.  So, I didn't know it was permissible, and therefore, I thought I would be kicked out.

so, I was very glad for my white coat, and the ability to camouflage my first pregnancy, which, you know, didn't show as quickly as the others. And,  I went in to speak with Dean Gardner towards the end of  my third year, and  I really I thought I was going in a medical student, and I might be coming out no longer a medical student, but it was such a beautiful moment for me, actually, because Dean Gardner was someone who had been, he was much older than I was, I don't know how many years shy of retirement he was, but he had the perspective of a whole medical career, and early in his career, He had gotten divorced because he had no time and no attention for his wife.

And so then he had a second wife, but he prioritized that marriage more than most of his peers, and they had two children. And so he was just immediately supportive, and it was this beautiful moment. In fact, he told me this story that I never forgot. They had two girls, and the first one was this, This quote, well behaved baby who slept through the night and wasn't fussy and so on and so forth.

And so he said he and his wife just felt so like, Tapping themselves on the shoulder. They're such good parents. Look at the kind of child. I don't remember what his specialty was. I don't think he was pediatrics, but you know like they just felt like oh, they're such great parents. Their education has served them so well.

His being a doctor and knowing all this information and then the second child was born and she did not follow the rule books at all. And then he, he was laughing saying we realized it never was us in the beginning. So, that was like a little gift that he gave me. Um,  so I actually took a year off between third and fourth years in medical school.

Which worked very well because prior to this my husband had taken a year off to pursue one of his interests. So, we were. already out of sync and I was actually thinking after I graduated I would have a year before we began our internship and I was planning to go to South Africa but instead I stayed home and had a baby and you know one of the things that  was deeply influential in my thinking about being a physician mom is that I was six months pregnant when I completed third year.

I finished up my surgery rotation and then I was off starting in July because of the academic calendar, although Josephine, my daughter, wasn't born until September.  And  those first two months when I was at home, in my third trimester, basically fully functional, I didn't have any kind of symptoms besides just having a larger belly.

But I didn't have pain, I didn't have preeclampsia, I didn't have any of that stuff.  And it was so hard to go from  Basically, being in the hospital, I was just a third year medical student, but I felt like I had a meaningful role. Like, what, I had no illusion how important I was. I was at the bottom of the totem pole, but I was learning, I was fetching things when they were needed.

Like, I had a very clear contribution, pretty much, from when I woke up, put my clothes on, and went to the hospital, to when I came home.  And I managed to  Get laundry done and I would meet I remember counting it up like I think on a typical day in the hospital I would interact with about 70 75 new people every single day between family members and just nursing staff and patients in and out and so on so forth and now  I'm in my apartment and It literally takes all day to get laundry done and cook dinner And I have this kind of  Empty feeling, even though I was home because I had chosen it.

Like, this was entirely what I wanted, but  it was such a profound change in my identity, from having long to do lists, and the stress, and the importance of being in medicine, to  the simplicity of  nesting, which but I was so grateful that I equilibrated  to the pace of life at home before my daughter was born. And anytime anybody asked me, I encourage people not to work until you go into labor, right? Because there is a very real transition that happened, being at home. And I was really happy that that transition happened, as a completely independent variable, from becoming a mother and welcoming my daughter.

So by the time she was born, I was pretty comfortable being at home. There was no, like, internal emptiness, because there wasn't enough to do. So,  and then,  I could just Have the joy and the focus on bonding and  be able to really put my attention on her and becoming a mother rather than being sort of motivated by this internal emptiness, which was a very natural consequence of  no longer being in the hospital every day.

Hmm. That's beautiful.  And when you  Had her and you had your quote unquote paternity leave How long were you home after she was born? 

I? was home until the following July because just as a medical student there was no way to like Do that differently and my husband was already a year out of sync.

So  I think Josephine was born on Sunday and He went to the hospital  back to whatever rotation he was in on Tuesday. So he had one day off, but I was home until the following July when she was nine months old. And, another thing about that, I didn't really think of it as maternity leave. Quite frankly, I took thought of it as leave of absence in good standing, and during that time I had a baby, and I didn't know anybody. Like, I know a lot of people crave connection and support and so forth, and I didn't have family nearby, I didn't know anybody who had a baby. There was this graduate student across the hall who used to like to,  Come and talk to me, but I was less interested in talking to her once I had my baby and So it really was just the two of us and people used to say to me  Oh, it must be so hard.

Are you getting any sleep? And  I just was really clear I got a whole lot more sleep as a new mother than I did as a medical student  and the way that  Rod and I organized it because I Because I had already done third year, and he was doing third year, I was completely sympathetic to  his need for sleep when he was home, and  being able to, you know, do what he needed to do to show up well.

And, so, we slept in different rooms when she was born, for, I can't quite remember, it was at least two months, so that  he could,  Like, I know that this goes against all of our  feminist inclinations and so forth, but I was really clear, he needed good sleep,  and I  wanted good sleep, but I could nap during the day.

Like, I didn't have other responsibilities besides me and one baby, and, you know, making sure  we were both fed, and I think, on Sunday afternoons,  I would cook three dishes. And that was dinner for the week. We would, you know, eat the same thing Monday and Wednesday, the same thing Tuesday, Thursday, whatever.

But I just was super organized, and I just was with Josephine.  

Yeah, and That's why I don't like labels like feminist. I would never call myself as such because I believe in feminist principles and all that. But I'm way too complex to be labeled by anything like that. And it's all matters what works for you and your family.

So that makes complete sense that you had already gone through third year. He is currently in it. You have a stable marriage  it was a agreement between the two of you that worked,  

it was really straightforward, and I guess I'll add that the first two years of medical school, I really had to work hard.

I didn't have a  background in science. I mean, I did my pre med prerequisites, but like, I had to work at it. And he really didn't. He majored in neuroscience at Harvard, and it all came pretty easily. Brilliant. He read a lot of other books and he just didn't have to work that hard the first two years. But then, come third year, where it's clinical medicine and interacting with people and emotional intelligence,  that was draining and intense and his learning curve was ultra steep and mine just wasn't.

So I knew what he was going through and, we took a really wonderful childbirth class. And one of the things that the teacher used to say is when people would ask questions about sleep, once the baby comes, she would always say, Whatever gets everybody the greatest amount of sleep.  And so, it was really uncomplicated because this is what got everybody the greatest amount of sleep.

Right. Because I was exclusively breastfeeding, like, there was no way for me to take the nights off and it would have been Right. Like, I wouldn't have wanted to.  

Right. And did that have any effect, the sleeping in the different rooms, on your actual marriage or were you so focused on the task at hand, him finishing, you taking care of the baby, that it was not an issue?

That's a really, good question. Like, you know,  27 years later, I would say no, no big deal. But as I go back there,  the biggest issue  is that,  We had our California king bed in the bedroom that he slept in by himself. And we had,  it was comfortable, but it was an open futon in the in Josephine's room, which is where I slept.

And she was in the crib and it was all very easy.  And there were times in the evening where she was asleep and I could go get into bed for a few hours before she would wake up and. I felt energetically like it went from being our bedroom to being his bedroom. Like there was an invisible wall that I had to sort of energetically hack through.

Like I didn't feel welcome  in my bedroom because it felt like it had become his bedroom. And if I were to say something like that to him now, he would know exactly what I was talking about. Because we have Um, I think he found it just super confusing. What do you mean it feels like you're not welcome?

Like,  please get into bed.  

You told him that. How did that conversation go at the time? 

Well, I didn't tell him it right away, but I think in those years, like now, if I become aware of something I would say it and we have a deep trust that we can navigate things and there's no benefit to holding on to it.

But in those days, it's more that  I would be unconscious but feel something and then it would become more and more clear to me and  then it would fester and then it would become this like,  smelly rocket just waiting to be shot into the atmosphere of our marriage. And usually it would be, you know, if  Josephine was hard to comfort and she was fussy or I was particularly seep deprived, or  he would say something thoughtless, not expecting or like aware of the impact it would have.

And then it would like,  You know, the gusher would come and I, but  not even really anger as much as just feeling deeply rejected. And I'm very clear that he never intended that. He just, I don't even know what to say, just that it was his room and probably as I'm thinking about it now,  if he,  like, energetically kept making space for me,  He would have missed me so much and felt rejected himself and jealous of our child because I was sleeping with her and not with him. 

You know, like we all have all of our protective mechanisms. but to his credit, he tried really hard to understand what I was saying and to whatever extent he could understand it.  He shifted, but it wasn't a lot, although this is really sort of funny that we're having this conversation, because just last month, I had a number of different work commitments and worked late and he went to bed earlier than me.

And I did have, for like the first time in decades, that feeling again. And I said, you know,  energetically,  it feels like it's your room again. Can you shift that?  He said, Oh, yeah. Like, it was a very straightforward conversation.  But, you know, to his credit, he has,  he's a  martial arts black belt,  like pays attention to energy.

I think this would be a very big conversation for  most people, but he, he knew what I was saying. And so I don't remember like  a big reunion or like a big  special lingerie for when I moved back in. Like I was very happy to move back in as soon as It wasn't going to mean less sleep for any of the three of us.