The Sunday Sanctuary with Dr. Amna Husain
A weekly series that profiles the most fabulous, hard-working, 24/7 hustlers, and how they spend their Sundays.
Dr. S. Amna Husain is a board certified pediatrician, board certified lactation consultant, and founder of Pure Direct Pediatric, which offers Direct Primary Care (DPC), in Marlboro, New Jersey. DPC is a unique medicine model that allows patients a more personalized experience without the limitations of health insurance.
Dr. Husain is a strong believer that pediatricians are the cornerstone of helping parents and families raise the next generation and that our children deserve the best care, inspiring her to create her own concierge pediatric practice. As a millennial parent herself, Dr. Husain loves delivering meaningful advice and attention to not just her patients and families, but also educating her followers on social media. She's active on Instagram and Tiktok (@dr.amnahusain). In her free time, she keeps herself busy with an energetic toddler daughter, testing out new recipes, exercising, and always making room for dessert.
Q: What time do you wake up or does the alarm go off?
A: So, I have a little girl. Not so little anymore I guess, but she's three. So, I usually let Sunday be a day where I let myself wake up on my own, but oftentimes I’m pre-programmed to wake up somewhere between 6-7am.
Q: What is your morning routine (specifically the first 15)?
A: My weekend routine in the mornings is a little different. During the week, like I said, I usually have my alarm go off and the first thing I go to do is work out. But on the weekends because I know my schedule is very different, I’ll probably just be taking care of my little one, hanging out at home and not going to work. My favorite thing to do is to be able to get up and enjoy a cup of coffee before she gets up. Bonus if I can have breakfast, because with a young kiddo, usually you’re just like “let me feed them, let me go do this with them,” and then you’re eating your own breakfast maybe between bites and I have totally reheated coffee in the microwave like 3 to 4 times. It's disgusting. So one of my favorite things is if I get up early, even like 15 minutes, I love getting to have a cup of coffee just by myself.
Q: What is your Sunday mantra?
A: So I thought a lot about this, and I can't say I have one mantra, but it just so happened it came to me today that I pulled out my coffee mug to have while I was at work, and one of my favorite quotes, this is something that I think still stands for Sunday, is from Walt Disney. It says, “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” I do think that works for me, because oftentimes on Sundays I do a lot of my planning and organizing for the week. You know not just scheduling patients but like scheduling calls, getting in the right mindset, so I think that really works well for my Sundays.
Q: What’s your go to breakfast/brunch?
A: Before I had my little girl, I did my residency, so I was up as doctors in the hospital at like 5-6am, and then I always have been an early bird, so when people eat brunch at ten, I'm starving! I have to eat a small breakfast, especially if I do plan on brunch, before. We are more breakfast people, and my favorite breakfast personally is one I don’t make. Things to a mom taste so much better when you don’t cook them. So, before Covid obviously happened, one of our favorite things to do, my husband, my daughter and I, would be to pick a place for breakfast and we will go out. We go out, we enjoy breakfast, it's a good meal because my daughter loves it, my husband and I both love it, and it could be anything. Whether it's omelets or pancakes, whatever it could be, it’s just nice to enjoy not having to do the hustle in the mornings. So, obviously during the summer we did that a little bit, we went out to eat maybe once or twice for breakfast, but then as things have gotten crazier since October/ November, we have just been staying in. But I miss it. I miss that tradition a lot.
Q: Do you give yourself any Sunday self-care treatments?
A: Nothing I feel like you could say is the typical self-care. I'm not somebody who gets her nails done, or anything like that. But some of my favorite things I like to do at least would be a massage. If I switch off with my husband so someone is at home with my little girl, then I'll get a massage on the weekend. Another thing, total girl thing, is that’s the time I get to pluck my eyebrows, because during the week I sure as heck don’t get a chance to. So it's nice to be at home and do my eyebrows and take a longer shower, and all of those like, ‘let me actually groom myself and take care of myself,’ that I don't get a chance to do during the week.
Q: What song is a good representation of your Sunday?
A: Again, I had to think about this a little bit. But I think it's going to be a Disney song, and I’m going to pick probably Cinderella’s song like A Dream is a Wish your Heart Makes. Because being a pediatrician, I am strict with screen time, but always on the weekends we like to enjoy watching a Disney movie. It might be broken up in pieces, but we go through one a weekend, and the one we watched most recently was Cinderella. So I think it's a good representation, because I think it is one Disney movie, and it's like a classic movie that I grew up watchin, and it's a nice bonding moment for us, like me and my daughter.
Q: How has your Sunday routine changed over the years?
A: Oh this one I love, because it has changed so drastically. When I was a medical student before I got married, oftentimes my Sunday would be spent waking up and studying from like 8 until 3 or 4, and I would break it up with a workout or maybe go out to eat, but it was a lot of studying. Those were such hard Sundays; it was so hard to motivate yourself through a weekend. But then, once I was in residency, my Sundays would be spent working. We used to work almost every weekend, 3 out of the 4 weekends in the month. So, some of my Sundays would be spent 7 to 7 working in the hospital or on a night shift, and it almost didn’t even feel like you got a weekend. It was a job so you didn't think anything of it. Now that I own my own practice, I work in outpatient and don’t work in the hospital, I get my weekends off.
Sunday’s are so different. Sometimes you end up more tired, because I have a little one, so that makes me end up running around like crazy trying to get all my errands done on the weekends and then Monday comes again. When I look back on my Sundays in medical school I think gosh that was such a hard time, and then I look at the Sundays I have now and I’m not working and I’m really grateful. I'm grateful and thankful that in the last 10 years they’ve morphed so much.
Q: Do you exercise?
A: I love to work out. I work out about 5 to 6 times a week. Typically on Sundays I reserve it for either a lighter workout like gentle stretching, yoga, foam rolling. Those kind of things where I’m like maybe I’ll have knots from working during the week being hunched over on the computer, etc. So I like to keep it light, and it’s actually something I look forward to, one of those self care things I do for myself, that instead of dedicating say, an hour to working out, you’re dedicating a good 45 minutes to getting a good stretch session in or a therapy session for yourself.
Q: Do you like to spend your Sunday alone or with family/friends?
A: I prefer with my family - I feel like that is our time to connect. Personally my alone time ends up happening any way if I’m at work or when my daughter is napping. My husband and I are both pretty busy during the week, so it’s nice that he is around then.
Q: Do you use any apps or products for relaxation?
A: I don't use any apps. Products, yes I do. As I mentioned I have foam rollers, therapy balls, those kinds of things. I am in love with my heating pad especially during the winter right now. It feels so good especially on those knots I have, but no specific self care relaxation products. I don’t get the chance to take nice long baths or anything like that, but usually I do love my heating pad and foam roller, plus my weighted blanket.
Q: What is your ideal bedtime?
A: It’s 9:30. I wake up around 5 something. I try to say 9:30 but that's so I'm in bed before 10.
Q: What are some of your favorite Sunday activities?
A: Our favorite Sunday activity as I mentioned is going out to eat for breakfast, and we love to go do groceries together as a family too. Now that Covid is going on and we really aren't doing outings like putting our daughter in swim classes, we’ve ended up not really going out, so the only outing we do have is going to the grocery store, and she loves it. We actually do make that our weekend “thing to do,” going to the grocery store. It’s really kind of sad, but also kind of cute. It’s one of those things where I love getting to see her so happy and you know help me with the groceries and enjoy it and everything. We do a grocery run together, but it depends on what we're working on.
Q: How do you prepare for the week ahead?
A: My husband and I usually have a strategizing session where we’re able to, when she usually naps from 12-3, so that’s when we crank down. We get out our laptops and our planners and we plan. We work around each other's schedules; I have a patient at this time, will you be home this time, I recently launched a Youtube channel so sometimes I’m editing videos as well as my videos go live on Monday mornings, so we do a lot of work around that. Sundays are for strategizing for the week ahead.