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

I do wonder how Mums with these sort jobs manage with non sleeping toddlers. Our worst patch of sleep (apart from first few weeks) was after I went back to work at 12 months and we had endless teething and nursery illnesses for the first year back. I was a shell of my former self and made so many mistakes at work although luckily I am not a neurosurgeon. Would everyone in this situation be able to afford a night nanny or does other partner take over the wakeups?

My DH worked full time (not a brain surgeon alas) and I was at home full time so I did all the night feeds, for both kids. Wasn’t an issue and was the logical thing to do. I didn’t have meetings or have to make important decision affecting others or simply hold a conversation, so I did the nights and slept when the baby slept during the day. This obsession that men should do their “equal” share of the nights and simultaneously hold down a FT job is simply ludicrous when the mother is at home all day.

Dh wasn’t a brain surgeon, but was still working very long hours in a demanding job where wrong calculations/instructions to his team would have been very serious.

So as a SAHM at the time, I thought it was solely down to me to do night feeds for both of ours.
Though in any case both were EBF so he would have been sod all use anyway. 🙂

They need to buy in help at least one or two nights a week so that presumably the mum gets a break too.

The surgeons on my road, at the private school I work at & in my family aren't short of a bob...

Since NHS salaries haven't kept pace with inflation for the last 10-20 years

If the neurosurgeon is the mother, then no she should be on maternity leave. If ML has ended and baby still not sleeping though, then they need a night nanny.

If it is the dad, then no Mum should be dealing with night feeds unless he is on paternity leave.

No. This is one if those situations where safety has to come first. Surgeons, airline pilots etc must be well rested or should call in sick as they are not safe to do their jobs sleep deprived. People's lives would be at stake.

No but surely these things are discussed before you have the baby? I wouldn’t have a baby with or as a neurosurgeon having never thought about what would happen at night time. I’m sure a neurosurgeon has enough money to source help if they need also.

Ex DP was a firefighter and we spent some time trying for a baby. He worked 4 on 4 off and I knew I would be doing all 4 nights of night feeds because he couldn’t go into work exhausted (and two of those 4 were nights anyway).

@CareerDerailment So you are agreeing with me but just explaining why that's the case? 😆

11 pages and the enigmatic OP hasn’t been back.

Since when did surgeons earn so little?

I don’t think that was because of how much sleep she had or didn’t have, though, was it? I mean, are you saying that if she’d slept lovely eight hours she’d have backed down over the miners strikes? Because she wouldn’t!

Mine still didn't sleep longer than 3 hours at 18 months, often less.

Well, Maggie Thatcher ran the country on only 3-4 hours of sleep a night

and look what happened to the country as a result.

If the brain surgeon was nursing then I presume she will be up half the night.

yes fair enough I assumed this was an NHS surgeon scenario.

Obviously it depends on the family income, and where in the UK they are, but in London, a nanny to cover all the hours that an NHS surgeon works would take at least two-thirds of their after tax income.

You don't specify whether the brain surgeon is male or female, but in either case, I would expect them to take up maternity/paternity leave. A baby only wakes up every 2-3 hours for the first few months of their life. After that, if the brain surgeon is working the next day and the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, I would expect the brain surgeon's partner to generally go see the child first.

What if both parents are brain surgeons? My baby didn't sleep longer than a 2 hour stretch still at 12 months so I was back at work.

What if one parent was doing them all so you had one really rested parent at work and the other crashed the car and killed themselves and baby because they fell asleep at the wheel overtired?

There's a balance, a way to structure things to ensure both parents get rest. People with jobs that require them to be rested are still parents and need to do that job too. E.g. one parent go to bed in another room at 7pm and gets uninterrupted sleep until 12:30, other parent responds to wake ups in that time, then swap until 6am so other parent gets same 5/5.5 hours uninterrupted sleep and then some more around wake ups. Parent working can get up an hour earlier and watch baby while they get ready for work, giving non working parent an extra couple of hours.

Anyone not stepping up saying they need rest is making an excuse to check out of their job of parenting.

Crikey, I'd hope enough to pay for some form of childcare. If you're a brain surgeon?
But you're right I don't know exactly what their salary is.

I’m in Ireland so it always surprises me how little consultants earn in the NHS (when I see figures quoted here)

irish consultants earn a minimum of €200K and senior consultants can far exceed that when you add their private clinics into the calculation

No
Dh has job requires him to be on ball or people die. He would have done night feeds eacĥ week when he didn't have a shift the next day.
He would however do feeds while I wne tto new early (7pm) so I could get some sleep qnd I would rake over at 11pm when he went to bed for example

Quitel But it's irritating to have to wade through the faux naivety over it.

Unless it's real naivety. In which case we are well fucked.

well of course. Any health service does that.