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

She also believed women should stay at home and raise children. I wouldn't want to follow here every example.

You clearly have no idea what NHS earnings are.

Well, Maggie Thatcher ran the country on only 3-4 hours of sleep a night so I guess it depends whether the person is able to function on that amount of sleep of whether it affects their performance.

So the service is balancing patient outcomes with operational viability.

Interesting. How much do you think neurosurgeons actually earn?

I've no clue whatsoever how much sleep any surgeon has each night.

If I needed surgery on the NHS then I'd frankly accept who I'm given. Assuming they are actually experts and fully qualified.

If I had a baby and I was a surgeon then I'd probably employ childcare as it's a very lucrative career and also obviously very stressful.

An NHS consultant salary will struggle to support a nanny.

Or Brain Surgeon's indignant mummy.

Why do you think "successful" doctors (especially female) tend to be from supported backgrounds, with good dual incomes, and those who waited to have children? Because if they don't, they often don't make it in the career path they initially wanted.

COI - I should probably have been a consultant paediatrician. I'd started training in that direction, but in the absence of family support I couldn't handle the long shifts in neonatal care when my own child was young, even part time, and wasn't mastering the job. Experience in that area was essential to progress to registrar level. My second pregnancy finished off my chances of progression as, at the time, funding for part-time training was restricted and time-limited.

I was actually startled how many of my colleagues, also from overseas, with small children had grandmothers who had moved to the UK to look after them. My mother was still working (worked full time past 70) and couldn't afford to do that. I also didn't want to work full time medical hours with a young baby, though I needed to work for my own sanity.

Long story short, I'm now a violin teacher.

(name changed in case of outing myself)

Odd that OP seems to have disappeared, are they the 'brain surgeon' ? Seems yet another pointless thread where OP isn't giving much info about anything.

No they shouldn’t be doing that. However, they should choose the right partner to have children with who understands pluses and minuses of marrying the neurosurgeon.

I hate threads like this where there’s a click bait first post and the OP disappears.

Have we established why the brain surgeon hasn't taken maternity leave?

This is true. However in practical terms if you stopped every NHS worker who was sleep deprived from working, it would break in less than 24 hours.

Sleep deprivation is on a par with impairment from alcohol or drugs. If only there were a way to make an industry around testing and prohibition and we'd all be safer.

It's really interesting how much people still think doctors/surgeons earn, despite recent strikes and information around it. Sure the pay at the top end eventually is good (might take 20 yesrs to get there), but most doctors/surgeons with newborns will still be registrars, earning around 60k (with lots of expenses other careers dont come with).

Most registrars couldn't afford a house big enough to accommodate a regular night nurse, never mind the cost of one.

You've started your post with a logical fallacy.

There is no neurosurgeon working full time (10 sessions) who's operating daily. Their job plan will include clinic, admin time and SPA - usually two sessions. You'll have about one big and one day surgery list a week.

So yeah, if you're operating the next day you probably need good sleep. But the idea that your average brain surgeon is spending every day with someone's life in their hands is unrealistic.

DOI - doctor (with small children, up regularly in the night) married to a surgeon who also helps in the night.

Loads of random jobs have safety-critical elements. I am a translator and if I mess up people potentially die. E.g. mistranslating ingredients can cause fatal allergic reactions (which is why AI is a shit idea).

Mother in Law by any chance?

That’s why nurses have buddy checks but it’s really not comparable.

As a person who is facing brain surgery and has spent a lot of time on nuerology wards and discussions around the brain with medical experts, brain surgery is just not comparable to other fields of surgery or medical roles. Controlled bleeding in any other part of the body would cause a devastating brain injury. A mm of difference could mean the loss of speech, vision, ability to swallow etc. It’s not just the risk of death

I think all parents should share the parental load. But bare in mind surgeons aren’t operating 5 days a week. They probably have 2/3 surgery days and my hope would be that those days they’re well rested and can pick up the slack on days where they don’t need to stand in an operating theater for hours on end

No. I’m assuming if the baby is that small the other partner is not at work so they should be up. My dh never did night feeds, although that was mostly cos I was ebfing and didn’t express

for the first six months whilst baby was in our room my husband was in the spare room and I did all night feeds and wake ups

the way I saw it was he had a 30 minute drive to work 6:30am every day

I had no plans but the odd baby group the next day as I was on maternity leave I did t expect him to help at all at night

he helped at the night the first three weeks as he was off work though

now if baby (toddler!) wakes at night we take it in turns as we’re both working

so I wouldn’t expect the surgeon to be helping at night only if the other parent is on parental leave

if both parents are working then I think both parents need to do night time

Reflecting...

I feel if you ARE a neurosurgeon then you'd know how important sleep is for everyone and are smart enough to have thought of
A. How you can support your partner
B. A night nanny

No.

A Night Nanny ? are they just not for the royal family and mega rich.

Night nanny's aren't prohibitively expensive as most are only used for a limited time.