If you’re married to a surgeon please tell me if you think I’m being unfair?

The problem is, I'm not persuaded surgeons, relatively, do earn enough nowadays to make the sacrifices worth it.

@RosesAndHellebores I am so sorry for late your loss .

I'm not married to a surgeon but an Anaesthetist. I'm a dentist. I work long days myself but still manage to get up before him,make him breakfast, feed the dog, take the dog to daycare, do 10 hours at work, pick to dog up and then cook dinner before we relax. I don't know if it's just surgeons or something they learn at medical school. Or something they learn at work.

I have worked with a lot of top surgeons in the past.

And I can genuinely say there wasn't a single one of them who wasn't arrogant, up their own arse and came across as though they thought they were a gift to us all from God himself.

I don't know what it was that made them like that, but if they carried that attitude home with them, I can only imagine what family life was like for their wives and children.

Do you love your husband and your child ,OP? Because you seem to regard the child as a difficult nuisance, and the husband as failing to centre you in his life . This discontent and lack of connection seem to be at the heart of your problem, rather than the exact circumstances of your life.

If your husband is taking your child out ( or looking after her at home without your involvement) for most of one of the two weekend days, he seems to be trying to accommodate your desire for what? A single lifestyle?

I think you might well benefit from discussing these feelings of being put upon and neglected with a professional rather than enquiring on Mumsnet where most replies just mirror their own experience.

Three lads in my class at school became surgeons, two were dead before they reached 55.

@Whelm how did they die?

Do you love your husband and your child ,OP? Because you seem to regard the child as a difficult nuisance, and the husband as failing to centre you in his life . This discontent and lack of connection seem to be at the heart of your problem, rather than the exact circumstances of your life.

If your husband is taking your child out ( or looking after her at home without your involvement) for most of one of the two weekend days, he seems to be trying to accommodate your desire for what? A single lifestyle?

I think you might well benefit from discussing these feelings of being put upon and neglected with a professional rather than enquiring on Mumsnet where most replies just mirror their own experience.

It's cos your husbands a reg. Anaesthetic bosses are lovely and often send us regs home way before the actual list finishes (most finish around 6 earliest but v v common they are still running at 7/8 ock). Surgical consultants a) would never do that b) regs can't as they'll lose their numbers and practice. In anaesthetics 90% of our training is giving anaesthetics, surgeons have to cover a lot more other stuff (wards clinics a&e etc so time in theatre is more precious from a learning perspective vs us, once the pt is settled on the table there's not tons to do until time to take the tube out, and by the time we are a reg that doesn't really add to our learning so our bosses let us leave

Yea to the cooking, I resort to mass batch cooking and a freezer full of tub foods else my diet would be horrific

We can't read up about pts from home in my current trust as it's not an app based patient record system like my last hospital, I compensate for getting in at 7am

Just depends which side of the fence you’re standing. Some silly girls do get over involved. The older or more self respecting don’t do that but some definitely do and seem to enjoy that you’re made to feel small. Incorrigible flirts at times… ridiculous.

anaesthetists prep the patients, if you’re regularly expected to be working late you need to talk to your managers, you aren’t on call every day and they aren’t in theatre every day. They work similar hours to all other doctors. What about intensive care doctor's, obstetricians? They aren’t more special just because they cut.

I am 40 and we have 1 dc age 2. I do everything for dd in terms of nursery runs, packing bags, ensuring dd has new shoes that fit, taking her to appointments etc. Any admin you can think of, I do.

i also work full time from home, so I have flexibility which is why I do nursery etc. At weekends DP will take dd out from 10ish to 4pm ish on a Saturday or Sunday so I can have a break. I don’t think this is ok or enough and I’m starting to get really pissed off that everything is left to me.

if I ask DP to do a specific task like put a wash on or pick up some food then he will. But what infuriates me is there is NEVER a sense of urgency from him to be home at a reasonable time and he would absolutely never ensure he was there to collect dd from nursery for example. I have to cut my data short often to collect her if unwell but he literally does not think he can do this because he can’t just leave patients (in his words). Obviously I know that there is a difference with his job but I am absolutely at the end of my tether tonight and very upset he’s been at work since 6am and not even asked how I’ve got on with dd and her bedtime (she’s very difficult at the moment). It’s making me very unhappy and feel very alone. It’s caused loads of arguments the last few weeks as I feel totally put upon. I don’t feel I have an equal relationship and the only answer I get back is that his job means he can’t do more. I’m sick of it all, should I expect more, is it fair?

On our first day of induction as F1 doctors in Belfast we were all sat down by management with the forms to "opt out" of the European working time directive. There was no plan for what would happen to the rota etc if we didn't want to do that. As far as I know we all did as we were told.

But yes I appreciate Northern Ireland is a different contract to rest of the UK and I'm not up to date with current medicine contracts other than what I see on my husband's anaesthetic reg rota (we are currently in England). Over the 28 days of February 2025 he is working an average of 48.75 hours a week

If OP comes back maybe she can share roughly where in the UK they are

I have worked with a lot of top surgeons in the past.

And I can genuinely say there wasn't a single one of them who wasn't arrogant, up their own arse and came across as though they thought they were a gift to us all from God himself.

I don't know what it was that made them like that, but if they carried that attitude home with them, I can only imagine what family life was like for their wives and children.