Reasonable to expect a surgeon to do this?

I don't think you are.

You need to know what his rota is. He is probably working NHS and some private work.

Surgeons do work long days sometimes but not every day, he will have clinic days and ward rounds.

I can only presume it's a bot responding. So much absurd tripe. It borders comical.

JFC it's not the 1950s!

And in any case, she's not a surgeon's wife anymore and she needs to be able to support herself now.

I presume you’ve benefitted from the financial upside of being a surgeon’s wife.

The OP could be a high earner in her own right!

In almost all couples there is one parent whose career is better suited to being the primary parent. It’s not always the woman but in your case it appears it is.

I presume you’ve benefitted from the financial upside of being a surgeon’s wife.

Once the divorce is final he will pay you child support which is to cover the costs of being the primary parent.

If your role at work grows, use that sweet surgeon money to find a babysitter or nanny for top up care.

Looking to your husband is futile and will only cause you resentment.

I think the word 'surgeon' blinded a lot of posters to immediately being unsympathetic to the OP, as though she was expecting him to down scalpel to attend to his children.

Female surgeons upthread are managing to do school runs etc so her ex can't get away with doing nothing and I can understand her resentment, especially as the children live with her and she's the one doing the heavy lifting.

This.

I’m a consultant surgeon. My husband works away two days a week doing a senior role. We manage between us with no paid childcare.
A basic full time job plan is 10 sessions. Most surgeons do on call so some sessions will be evening, weekends leaving some non working time during the week. I do 11 sessions or PAs and have Wed afternoons off as my kids school has no wraparound care on Wednesdays.

On my theatre day ( once a week) I work from 8-6:30 . Ward rounds are at 8am but most surgeons work in a shared emergency care way where they only do the ward rounds 1/6 or 1/8 weeks. The rest of the time I start at 9am but get there earlier to get set up.
A surgeon has 1 day a week doing personal admin which is flexible and could be done from home. They will also spend at least half a day doing patient admin or desk work.

In a nut shell around 50% of my time is flexible and I could leave work / be free to look after my child.
If there is a true emergency, DH and I talk and work out who is most able to drop everything. If I had clinic and he had a critical meeting , I would cancel my clinic but do my best to telephone patients / add them onto my next clinic as overbooks etc. If I was in theatre this would be the trump card.

Surgeons have family emergencies just like everyone else. He should be pitching in.

I take my kids to the school bus 3 mornings a week and pick them up twice so he could help if he was near enough.

I would ask your Ex DH how many PAs he does. He will have control over his job plan and may be choosing not to have some more flexible time to be available to help with childcare.

Yup and that’s why I wrote he can outsource the child minding responsibilities that he can’t fulfill. Guess you chose not to read this. It’s not gender specific at all as far as I’m concerned but there are certain jobs that you can’t just drop to pick up a child from a play date

OP my husband is a consultant surgeon, its not all as black and white as people are saying. Is he NHS or private?

My husband for example works compressed hours, so he is largely unavailable for 4 days of the week. The NHS offer flexible solutions.

As others have said, surgeons are not operating every day, there are some meetings with colleagues for example that can not move. My husband has a weekly meeting at 8am to discuss patients who require clinical decisions spanning departments.

Others diary management is possible normally patient consulting on upcoming surgeries can be planned to suit diaries etc.

I'm not sure how you drill down in your situation however but hopefully that's helpful.

Why can't he pay for a nanny part time to collect the children and look after them until you are home from work. That would make your life so much easier and less stressful.

Can I ask what you think female doctors do? I don’t know any who’ve had to choose ‘one or the other’ and I don’t know any with a SAHP spouse either. Nobody is at home doing the running around for any of us.

OP your ex has to do what all of us who simply cannot leave work do - we have back ups on our backups on our backups and we pay them, from our ‘shiny important job’ pay cheques.

My child's surgeon told me that if you have a patient all prepped and ready to go for a procedure, you better be just about dying before you cancel it. I would be very upset if my surgeon was unreliable for this sort of thing. Not upset at his wife, but at him for not having other arrangements in place. I would change doctors if this was the sort of reason he was cancelling at the last minute. I can see for a surgeon this would be hard, but then he has to make other arrangements to cover himself. Not his wife, if she isn't able or willing to do it. What if she was a surgeon too?

I feel your pain OP as my own career has been sacrificed on the altar of my DH's career. It would bite more if it was an ex. You and your ex need to come up with an alternative, which might be for him to pay someone to be available to do pick ups if you both can't. Or he can pay you for it.

No, in my experience it is more often than not the exact opposite. People are usually quite willing to step up and help in a crisis if a colleague is unexpectedly ill or has some kind of personal problem, but I have never worked in a department that has the spare capacity to cover Consultants' entire workload when they are on holiday or long term sick etc.
Obviously the emergency cover has to be maintained at all times and it's a contractual obligation for most Consultants to absorb their colleagues' out of hours commitments when they are on holiday or study leave. So they'll be doing their own work, plus their share of the extra emergency cover but not the absent person's routine work. Some things might be suitable to delegate to a junior but if not, clinics, theatre lists etc just don't get booked. So no patients are actually cancelled as they never got a date in the first place, but the session isn't used so the effect on the waiting list is the same.
Same kind of thing with long term sickness. Plugging a gap for a few days is one thing and most people will help if they can, but if a colleague is off for months there is rarely the capacity to maintain full cover. We'd always ask for a locum in such circumstances but sometimes either the funding isn't forthcoming or you can't find anyone suitable in which case emergency cover is the priority and elective work suffers. You can't expect staff to do the work of more than one person indefinitely but they'll usually step up in an emergency.

Is good to hear from you, because you work with them. Can you please be more specific about what you mean by "very late adjustments to clinics"?

Does it mean they have an X amount of hours before they can make late adjustments, for example 24hr notice or 48 hr notice?

Or it means they can do it while at work, for example, they started working and after 4 hr, out of blue they need to make "very late adjustments" and leave work ASAP within 1hr and not finish their work shift after starting it?

I'm sure a surgeon is more than capable of arranging childcare. It's not the OP's job to facilitate his career.

Consultants I work with have to make very late adjustments to clinics, surgical lists etc due to, in no particular order and off the top of my head -

Illness
Child illness
Other caring responsibility (e.g. elderly parent crisis)
Nanny illness
Grandparent (back up childcare) illness
Teenage child crisis (mental health)
Delayed travel back from leave
Bike accident on way to work
Bereavement
Emergency dental issue
Delays on motorway on way to work
Broken bones (mountain biking)

In fact all the same things that other people experience in life. Short of expecting consultants not to have children, not to mix at parties/events to catch illnesses, not to go on holiday in case they get stuck, not to have any physical hobbies, not to be in relationship with other doctors, not to travel to work... Even the best laid plans of back ups fail.

It isn't proportionate to have multiple layers of expensive back ups just in case. As per my list above small child illness is an occasional factor and one factor among many. Doctors are not robots, they are human like the rest of us. And, all bar one that I have worked with over my career, they are extremely dedicated to their work.

But life happens and expecting otherwise is ridiculous. Doctors are bound by the same set of leave policies as the rest of us (sick, carers leave, special leave, bereavement leave, parental leave etc) so if some on here are angry about Doctors having occasionally to take time off in an emergency, take it up with the policy makers not the individuals. And calling Doctors out for being morally and ethically unsuitable for the job if they don't sacrifice themselves on the altar of their job at the expense of their life is insulting.

What? You expect him to be available during his work time like you? No, he can't.

Some jobs, being a surgeon is one of those jobs where is unreasonable to drop out the job and be available for your family. Especially if it's not a life and death situation. Even during a life and death situation, he may not be available same moment, and you'll need to wait a few hours.

I don't think your being unreasonable at all, I know of two consultants at work that have had to leave for childcare reasons..........strangely enough they are both female!! Surgeons are not permanently in theatre, they are often in clinics,ward rounds, teaching or at lunch.

He's definitely a good surgeon then if he doesn't think postponing life saving operations is reasonable in order to pick up his children.
I fail to see how any NHS or even private doctor or nurse of any level could bunk their shifts for this? Hopefully he has money, so could he not fund a childminder to ease the burden?

OP ask him to send you shifts time, and plan your time accordingly. Ask him specifically how often his shift time is changing last minute. Obviously, if is once a month is ok, but if it's every day, then he's lying. All surgeries and appointments are planned ahead.

He can't just leave work on a whim in a role like that, but he can pay for a nanny or au pair to share the load.

I wouldn't care whether he's a surgeon, a space man or a supermarket worker, he's also a dad and he has to pull his weight.

I already imagined how a surgeon in the middle of a surgery is telling to everyone: "sorry, I'm out, family emergency " 🤣🤣🤣🤦‍♀️

"If he's up to his arms in a patient in the middle of surgery he can't just drop everything to go and pick up a child from a playdate"🤣🤣🤣

It's plenty. And plenty enough to afford to pay for a babysitter so your patients don't end up with inoperable cancer, like a poor PP who's had her surgery cancelled four times.
But no, at least two surgeons on this thread think that apparently they "shouldn't have to do that".