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

How do you think they manage on on-call weekends when they may not get ANY sleep at all?

No, of course they shouldn't.

They're operating on a super sensitive organ of patient's bodies. These patients are critically sick, and need to be given the best chance of the best healthcare outcome, which will affect them for the rest of their lives....

The brain surgeon obviously needs to be fully rested to perform optimally.

Excuse the pun, but it's a complete 'no brainer' !!

If DIL does her share when NOT working the next day and gives your DD some time to rest earlier in the night as suggested above, your DD might find it makes nights easier. DH (not a bloody brain surgeon lol) has never done nights with either of our two. For DS2 I insisted on a separate room because a) you get more resentful watching someone sleep while you get up or BF for ages and b) it's easier having your own space with baby and not having to worry about the sleep and needs of another adult who isn't being much or any help anyway. It has made DH a bit sad but he can't have everything, and he likes sleep.

@Ireolu the DD can only be expected to put her own life and wellbeing to one side to a certain extent. She's not a facilitator for her wife's career, she's a person.

OP your daughter may be feeling this is the start of a slippery slope, she's probably wrong there judging by what you say, but remember how high-stakes everything feels when your first is small and how it feels like it's going to last forever.

Did you read the thread?

No. They can afford to hire a night nanny.

Makes sense, thanks for the context. 1980-2000 was a VERY different time for the profession. 25 years on and there are many, many more female surgeons. It’s about 1 in 5 at the consultant level, higher at registrar level and even higher at trainee levels (unsurprising given female students have outnumbered male students in medical school for years).

Good point @Psychologymam!

It's just a job and the realities of life have to be counternaced. In an ideal world noone with an important job would have un interrupted sleep but here we are in the real world

Yes, I work in a private hospital in the UK - mainly with orthopaedic surgeons which heavily skews the balance. Out of our ~50 orthopaedic consultants only 3 are women. Where I work it is true that the vast majority are married to SAHMs, however some have gone back to work once the kids were a bit older.

I worked in the NHS for 20 years of my career (~1980-2000) and even then the vast majority of our surgeons at all levels were male. Females tended to gravitate towards specialties with a better work/life balance eg: GP, anaesthetics, paeds etc.

I think in any job where a lot of rest is required there needs to be a clear set of expectations around how to deal with a new baby, so that the parent doing said job can get the required sleep.

I know a few people in jobs like that, for the most part the mother did not work and so was able to sleep more in the day. Some had some help in for things like cleaning.

I know one brain surgeon, a woman, when she had children she took a good long maternity leave which she had to plan carefully for. Her husband did a lot of the parenting on a day to day basis when she went back to work.

Your experience is most unusual. Do you work in the UK? Because about a third of surgeons are women, from trainees right up to registrars and consultants (in some specialities a third of consultants are women), so generally speaking, it is absolutely not the case that the ‘vast majority’ of surgeons are married to stay-at-home-mums. Perhaps in 1970, but certainly not in 2025.

My husband is an airline pilot. His sleep is a huge priority in our family and it dictates a lot of our schedule.

If dh is flying the next day, I am on baby duty for the night. He’s a deep sleeper so we don't require separate bedrooms but I could see us doing that as sleep is such a priority. I start getting stressed if I know he hasn’t got 7+ hours.

It’s just the way the cookie crumbles. It led to resentment when I was in the thick of it with sleep regression/teething but dh needs his sleep. I will even do my best stepford housewife impression and have dinner waiting if he comes home very late and has an early start (best believe I don’t lift a FINGER when dh has blocks of days off).

I’m not sure if you’ve picked up on this, but all of that talk about rest periods and compensatory rest, and having to stop work if you haven’t had adequate rest, refers to rest time time being interrupted by work. It doesn’t refer to broken nights sleep caused by a baby.

So the picture that you’ve quoted does not describe work life balance, it simply describes the work part of that balance.

And as a previous poster has said, in practice even that is rarely properly adhered to.

Which contributes, like other person said, to the exodus from the NHS.

The vast majority of surgeons that I work with are married to SAHMs who typically are forced to take the vast majority of the load re: DC. I’d say it’s why at least 50% of them end up divorced. Obviously though not every day is an operating day - lots of their time is taken up by clinics etc so it doesn’t mean that they can never help out with nights!

Neurosurgeons have to be driven. Getting hours of training/operating in is what makes them proficient at their jobs. With career progression your DIL may be around even less. Your DD needs to aware and OK with this. We are good friends with a neurosurgeon.

Tell me you haven't read the thread without actually saying 'I haven't read the thread'......

Brain surgeons can probably afford a night nanny. I’d take that option.

Does the same apply to a bus or an hgv driver who have the potential to do a lot more harm if tired?

The nhs doesn’t exactly follow all those lovely guidelines. The post call day of rest makes me laugh - working it seemed to be more normal than not. Like I said above, they could support nights before clinics, on days off etc but the nhs doesn’t care about them having a child or that they’ve worked over their designated hours, that they’re not getting adequate/mandatory leave or that they’re are burning out. Hence the mass exodus.

Idk, I slept in my daughter’s room most nights when she was waking to feed. I had a lot of anxiety, and walking up and down the hall all night just wasn’t it. (Eventually just started co-sleeping with her in there, as I could still be half asleep and still nurse…it must be way harder to be bottlefeeding!) It also allowed DH to get better sleep, but our intimacy suffered a bit. I guess you get to pick two out of three: Rest, intimacy, proximity to baby.

Your DD will simply have to get on with it. Her partner will then have to pick up the slack on her days off. Neither will get much in the way of a break for some time to come.

My DD started teething at 4 months. Might be worth a check to see if there are any small white indicators that would indicate the cause of such terrible sleep.
Having the ability to co-sleep in a room without my spouse was a life saver so your DD may find a better rhythm when trying to not wake someone up and BF'ing in the middle of the night.

Last but not least, as someone who had their first child in their 30's it is a hell of a shock to the system. You don't have the resilience you had in your 20s when you could literally party all night and still get to work. I found mat leave very dull, very lonely and utterly draining due to lack of sleep. It may be worth talking to your daughter about her plans - it's not an issue if she decides she wants to go back to work and have some space. It can be relentless being a SAHP and the best thing I ever did was go back to work. It gave me a much better balance and I could be a better parent when I had time with my kids.

OP I am as liberated as they come and my husband doesn't have a "life depends on it" job, I also had my baby in my late 30s. But as soon as my husband went back to work after paternity leave I did all the night feeds and nappy changes on nights he was working the next day whilst I was on maternity.

Don't get me wrong when I was feeding my baby back to sleep at 3am (after a 1am and 11:30pm feed) and DH was snoring his head off I had to resist the urge to give him a sharp elbow, but he did his bit at the weekend (although just nappies as I was breast feeding and couldn't express for shit)

Hopefully in a few months baby will be sleeping through alot more and they can share a room again, but I would 100% understand if DIL needs a seperate room for a bit. I think DD seems a bit fried and I imagine DIL moving out of the room is hitting a nerve but I think it's very sensible considering her job. xx She's in the trenches right now but she'll get through it. X

Of course they shouldn't. But neither should someone be operating heavy machinery on so little sleep... or on a building site... or driving a car for that matter. My husband used to have to pull over on the way home from work as he thought he was going to fall asleep at the week. Nobody should be doing any of these things on minimal sleep. That's why paternity leave should be massively improved.

I found this online that may be helpful in understanding the work life balance of a neurosurgeon.

No. But if they’re a parent of a newborn they should’ve taken maternity or paternity leave, and they should do their fair share at weekends.