Should a Brain Surgeon be up at night with a baby doing night feeds ?

Surely though if the OP was the neurosurgeon she would have called it that.

What if the mother is the neurosurgeon?

Even consultants in the NHS do not get paid enough to be able to pay for overnight nannies.
Quite a few I know are still in rented flats, can't afford somewhere with a garden for their children which they have put off having because of their work and cost

I’m pretty sure that any parent who is smart enough to be a surgeon will have worked this out BEFORE they have a baby. Since babies are well known for disrupting sleep, it’s not as if it was a surprise .

So no doubt this brain surgeon has a plan eg sharing overnights with her parther, going part time , hiring a night nanny.

The brain surgeon was once a junior doctor working long shifts and being constantly on call. I would assume that doing night feeds wouldn’t entail anything like that level level of sleep deprivation, so l’d be OK with it.

I would say no, provided the other parent doesn’t have a job that you’d also give that answer to. However, the brain surgeon must pull their weight in other respects. They do the night feeds on their days off, do they take the baby from the other parent for a rest when they get home. Do they do the other household chores the other parent can’t do because they’re so sleep deprived.

Not acceptable. And the Mother should have known this before having children with him, so she is expected to do the night feeds. Some jobs just have to take priority.

Very probably. Or, I’m going to hazard a guess at a new father who is trying to use his “important job” to avoid parenting and who has just had his arse handed to him by his sleep deprived wife.

Elective brain surgery isn’t usually planned for Sundays, so yes, he can take the night feeds.

People consistently overestimate doctor’s salaries - especially given the length of training, additional costs (between exams, insurance, GMC membership, college membership etc I spent nearly £3000 last year for the privilege of being able to practice).

Say you start medical school at 18…

Med school - 5 years (realistically if you’re aiming for neurosurgery you’ll spend an extra year doing an intercalated degree so let’s estimate 6 years)

Foundation program - 2 years

Neurosurgery training - 8 years but getting a spot is incredibly competitive (12 applicants to each post last round) so let’s estimate a year or two to get in - at this point you’ll probably do a staff grade job. If you want to get a consultant job then you’re basically expected to have a PhD so let’s also add in three years for that.

We’re now at 21 years so that 18 year old is 39 and they’re finally in a position to do a consultant job. However there’s a huge bottleneck in neurosurgery so back to the staff grade job market where yes, there is a range in salaries but most are advertised around 50-60,000 with some significantly lower.

So basically your average neurosurgeon is going to be 40+ if they wait for a consultant salary to have a baby. Odds are if you want a family you’ll want to start trying earlier than that so you’ll be having your baby on your SHO/reg/staff grade salary. The flippant dismissal of ‘oh well you’re a doctor so loaded so get a night nanny’ is really annoying. There’s a reason neurosurgery (and indeed many types of surgery) is overwhelmingly male despite women being the majority of doctors.

No if course not. But presumably they can afford help.

They don’t get paid that well in the nhs. Why do you think they were striking.

This is the reality of it, ultimately. One of my DD’s has a friend whose parents are both doctors and one is a brain surgeon. I would presume that they split parenting pretty equally when the kids are in their care. (And for those talking about 3 nannies, unfortunately not! They’re very affluent, of course, but they’re not mega rich.) So unless you’re going to say brain surgeons can’t have kids, there will be times when one is up with his/hers in the night…..

I've had brain surgery and they work in 2s, so hopefully all should be fine.

My DH works for emergency services, and when he was on duty, he slept in the spare room. Being sleep deprived could have been dangerous for him.

Lazy journo or a Uni student doing research. You can spot them a mile off, they only ask a question, don't give an opinion and don't come back to join the debate.

This. 2-3 hourly feeds suggest a very young baby, so the parent taking the maternity/parental leave does the night feeds. As PP pointed out, The NHS has good maternity leave.

And as a different PP pointed out, neurosurgeons don’t actually operate 7 days a week. I’m sure someone bright enough to become a brain surgeon can work out a solution.

It depends on the job of the other parent surely? If one is a brain surgeon and one is a bus driver, then the bus driver would need more sleep. If the other parent is office based the brain surgeon should get more sleep.
My DH used to drive miles for his job so I did night feeds. However whoever gets the most sleep should do the first feed of the day and they should do night duty when they're not working the next day.

All these posters thinking neurosurgeons are millionaires. A senior registrar might earn £60k, not generally considered to be a massive salary.
Consultants earn more, obviously, but many surgeons are not consultants.

For what it’s worth I’m a doctor, DH is also (and a surgeon, although not neurosurgery). When I was on mat leave DH did any feeds up to about midnight and then got up a bit earlier to do the morning bottle, nappy etc so I could express, shower and have a coffee. He’s now on leave (we’re doing SPL) and I’m back at work so we’ve swapped (although lucky DH doesn’t have to do the express…). When we’re both back at work we’ll take it on a day by day basis. If DH is on call or operating then I’ll do more overnight as my specialty isn’t patient facing so there isn’t the same intensity/acute stress. Then days when he’s on clinic, development, zero days etc he’ll do more overnight so I can catch up. We’re a team - we both need to be able to function.

Why is said brain surgeon not on maternity / paternity leave?
surely the surgeon has a few days off a week whereby they could do the night shift if they are not working the next day?

Should brain surgeons not have kids in case their sleep is disturbed? Should they pop out a baby then leave it with their partner and move into a hotel until the infant sleeps through the night? What about brain surgeons who've just fallen in love and are besotted to distraction? Should they be allowed to operate? How about the ones who are caring for elderly parents, or who are recently bereaved, or are supporting their teenage kids through serious stuff in their lives, or the ones who have any aspect of their life which might detract from their performance at work? How about the brain surgeons who've had a kid with another brain surgeon? Should they each stop working until they are able to get eight hours' sleep a night? How many parents of pre-school kids get eight hours sleep a night anyway?

Brain surgeons are normal people with lives who happen to have a job where they operate on brains. If you'd rather the brain surgery wasn't carried out by a normal human surgeon who is subject to normal human life events, I'm sure you could choose for your child not to have that surgery, though you might be waiting a while for an alternative to come along, and perhaps you'd rather the surgery was performed than not performed. Surgeons are entitled to have lives outside of work. I'm sure it's shitty as hell when a child needs brain surgery; but there just aren't very many optimally-rested, unstressed and unimpacted-by-life-events surgeons, and if surgery was only carried out by such near-mythical surgeons, there wouldn't be much surgery getting done.

There was an interesting snippet on the What's Up Docs podcast, or perhaps it was on Doctors Notes, recently, observing that many people carry out many of the very important, impactful events of their life having not had 'enough' sleep - exams, job interviews, court appearances, high-profile presentations, that really important piece of work with the looming deadline... Tired people turn out to be pretty good at hyper-focusing on the thing they have to do, e.g. brain surgery, it's the other bits of life that suffer first - maintaining patience and good manners rather than snapping at colleagues, doing the life admin and household chores before/after work, making a packed lunch to take to work rather than buying a sandwich and coffee in the hospital canteen, summoning the motivation to go for a run after work. A tired brain seems to prioritise pretty effectively.

If this is about a poor ickle male having to do his share then he won’t be up that often. If the baby is feeding 3 hourly and it bottle fed then both parents should be able to sleep in 6 hour amounts. They need to go to bed early. People find ways to function. Plus the stints get longer.

If it’s a female post maternity leave breastfeeding a baby that won’t sleep then 🤷🏻‍♀️

The answer is either way the surgeon judges if they are fit to work.

No.

ditto plane pilots, bus drivers etc

Doesn’t really matter, the range is huge and if on the lower end then it would need to be carefully planned. Paying for help for a specific duration is something that can be thought of ahead of time and accounted for when considering children.

The cost isn’t massively different to the cost of nursery fees many pay for years. If overnight, for a short temporary time.

I'm interested in how they know.