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

In other safety critical industries, fatigue is considered an organisational risk that needs to be managed - an airline is required to have a formal fatigue risk management system for example. They know people have babies, get divorced, go through penomause - they expect a level of fatigue and have reporting systems for staff to be able to say they don’t feel safe. Some also now monitor staff remotely using wearables so that the onus is taken completely off the individual.

That is not currently happening in healthcare - it is considered an individual risk, as most of the comments on this thread illustrate. There is a key problem of resource and residual risk that doesn’t play out in other industries - a flight being cancelled is an inconvenience but not a safety risk. An operation being cancelled will itself be a safety risk - is it safer to have a tired surgeon or no surgeon?

So its really complex but it is definitely something that needs to improve.

Please have a read of this report if you are interested!

Babies don’t just magically sleep through the night when maternity/paternity leaves ends.

No but I would compromise with extra night help in the form of a live in nanny overnight during the more difficult period

Are you the brain surgeon OP?

You are massively overestimating how much doctors get paid (presuming we’re talking about the UK). Especially in neurosurgery - there’s a huge lack of consultant jobs so most are stuck at registrar level on trust grade contracts for years (and having a PhD is almost essential to even have a chance at a consultant job so I’d imagine most having babies are in the registrar bracket due to the length of training). These jobs are usually advertised with a salary of around £50,000 but I have seen them go as low as £30,000. Not loads to fund a night nanny on!

Presumably one is taking leave and doing the night feeds.

My DH is a surgeon and was in training when my DD was born. Not sure how much people think surgeons, especially trainees (it can take up to 18 years to become a consultant) earn, but when my DD was born we did not have the money for extra help. He was disturbed sometimes at night but no more than when he was on call at the hospital and working the next day. Surgeons have lives like everyone else, well at least most do.

They should, but they don’t. Not until they are consultants, probably doing private work as well.

What happens when like my NCT friends and both parents are surgeons?

Aren't doctors working crazy hours anyway? In our local you'd have doctors who are on call on site after a full day shift, so by the morning they're dead on their feet. So the set up without a baby is working on no sleep.

You know the answer to this, OP, but you haven’t told us what else is going on…
IF you come home from work, help out with the baby and do your part with the household chores, then sure, you should be allowed to get your eight hours sleep, while OH deals with night-time feeds.
However, if you come home from work, eat a dinner prepared by your OH, then disappear to somewhere to “relax” for a few hours (gaming/watching tv etc.) while letting OH do everything else themself, then that relaxation time is stealing your sleep time, and not the baby/your OH…

I do think that parents should share night time feedings where possible (I breastfed so it was never possible for us, instead DH would get up early to take over baby so I could get a few reliable hours). But the decision as to what is possible has to factor in whether someone is working outside the home, what their responsibilities are etc. if I’m a bit foggy & exhausted at work, I can do a simple task I’ve been putting off like going through my filing & shredding.

however doctors do spend years of exhausting training & should be able to function on little sleep tbh. My DH used to do 24 hour shifts in one job.

Agree

Which is not a salary that sustains night nannies.

As a consultant neurosurgeon, Between £105,000 and £139,000 a year.

I remember having a discussion on a local Facebook group with some arse who accused me of driving on too little sleep… I had a newborn. What are we supposed to do? Hole up and not love until the child is three??

In answer to your question, no I would prioritise sleep for the working person however as soon as days off come around then the main parent gets the sleep.

More to the point, what do you think night nannies are paid!?

It really is the preserve of the extremely wealthy.

The mere suggestion is ridiculous.

What do you think an NHS neuro surgeon gets paid?!

The thing that strikes me with these ‘ooh, can’t possibly go without sleep’ threads is that babies aren’t the only thing that can cause a bad night.

So - no adverse weather, no loud parties if they live close enough for this to be an issue, no menopause, no just lying awake worrying about this and that, no being too hot or cold, no itchy skin?

We all have bad nights and plough through.

I’d be curious to know where they worked that they were having to operate every day? They usually have one day of theatre time. The rest is clinics, admin, ward rounds etc.

If they were on call they might have been at work all the day before, then most of the night when suddenly someone needs emergency surgery at 5am. Is that any less problematic for you than the night feed scenario?

Surgeons work insane hours sometimes.

I ebf until DS was 3. I was off on May leave until he was 9 months but then went back to work as a solicitor. He would not take a bottle at all. BF by 9 months was a matter of minutes if that, and DS and I coslept so I didn’t need to wake up fully. It would have been far more work to sterilise and prepare bottles, express or make up feeds and argue with DS in the middle of the night about it than it was just to bung a nipple in his mouth.

Surely if the baby is still feeding that frequently someone could still be on maternity leave? So either the brain surgeon is the mum and could be on maternity leave. Or brain surgeon is the day and his partner could still be on maternity leave and therefore could do ALL the night feeds. When Dd was a baby I was breastfeeding so had to do all the feeds anyway.

But if she’d been bottle feeding and dh was back at work and I was on maternity leave I’d have done all the night feeds anyway! Knowing I could have a nap in the day if necessary.

Was also going to say after reading some of the replies on here… I think there are a lot of posters who are under some sort of illusion that everyone that they come across that may have an impact on their safety has had a good nights sleep.

No.
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