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

No, but if they're a brain surgeon the household can presumably afford a night nanny.

Love this response. The automatic assumption seems to be that it's the Dad who is the brain surgeon and the mum is asking for help and it's unreasonable to expect this

No-one should be doing brain surgery on not enough sleep, but unless you have actual evidence that this person is performing brain surgery without being safe to do so, it's really none of your business. Unless, of course you are the other parent, in which case yes don't expect your partner to do night wake-up before surgery days!

Is this breast or bottle feeding. TBH I breast fed baby by bedside partner elsewhere and never asked them for turns. Was not a massive deal. It seems like a faff taking turns getting up and making bottles. Is the mum not on mat leave be they the surgeon or the partner. If they are on mat leave just let the working parent sleep.

I don't understand why anyone would be back at work if their baby was so young they're still doing 2/3 hourly feeds. If you're a brain surgeon or married to one, you should be able to afford to take a decent amount of leave

Of course not....and if a partner thinks otherwise, that is crazy. However, they are allowed paternity leave aren't they? In those weeks off, of course it is fine for them to do the nights....as long the few days before they resume work, they return to full nights sleep. They could hire a night nanny to help for a month or two to help get through the newborn stage.

It is well worth it, esp if it is your first child. We got one for a month or two with our first because we did not know what we were doing and had a week of no sleep because we could only get her to sleep in our arms. It was a Godsend, as she learned good sleeping habits from the night nanny. By child 2 and 3 we were comfortable and knew what to do, so it was not needed.

Brain surgery. It's hardly rocket science.

Or the (male) brain surgeon's mother?

Very true. I’m so exhausted with my newborn I woke up in such a panic the other night as I’d fallen asleep feeding her in my bed. The relief when I realised I hadn’t rolled onto her and she was fine!

Tough one but I think if I was a brain surgeon or married to one, I’d be using the salary to pay for help somehow (eg sleep consultant if the baby is not still young) but I’d assume this frequency of feeds would be during maternity leave..?

My understanding is that babies need night feeds and they can’t do the feeds themselves so parents need to. Babies neither know nor care what job the parents do.

You’re not operating every day. My DH is also a surgeon - I know the stress complications cause and don’t want to take any risk so the night before his operating lists he sleeps in another room. On all of his clinic days and days off he does the night wake ups. I can’t see any reason why being a surgeon would stop you from doing your fair share. I imagine if you were doing your fair share the rest of the time this would be a non-issue and your DP is pissed off because you’re using your job as an excuse to get out of parenting.

Well they should hopefully have taken enough maternity leave so that it's not a small baby and then realised that because of the nature of their job they needed to ensure their baby slept properly and sleep trained them, so that they weren't waking during the night. Or if they were struggling with sleep training, using a professional to help.

Well that's a loaded question, isn't it?! Are you the surgeon, or the partner fed up of doing everything? Having had a child have brain surgery (twice), I would want the surgeon to be up to the job in every way, but the few I have met seem to operate on extraordinarily little sleep anyway. I would also assume that someone smart and skilled enough to be a brain surgeon would also be smart enough to manage their time in a way that works best for them.

No working parent should be up doing night feeds when the other parent is still on maternity leave. Full stop.

@Mondaytuesdayhappydays what's your point why haven't you come back to the thread?

No they shouldn’t along with a long list of other occupations … my bil slept in the spare room before flying for instance

Totally agree. There are 100s of jobs that could result in multiple life's lost if people aren't well rested.

A brain surgeon will only make a mess of one person a train driver could kill hundreds.

Anyone, male or female, who performs a safety-critical role where a mistake will cause death - various kinds od surgeons not just brain surgeons, air traffic control and pilots etc, will receive training on the effects of fatigue and will have a professional responsibility to declare the fact and step away from active duty if they can't reliably perform properly due to lack of sleep.

A brain surgeon is paid enough that they can employ a night nanny to do the overnight work.

Why are you assuming the brain surgeon is a man?

Spot on

Not sure why more recent posters are assuming the surgeon must be the father and that the mother isn’t a surgeon. Interesting.

youve chosen to completely miss the point… if cleaners make a mistake then a bit of floor doesn’t get mopped, if a neurosurgeon makes a mistake when operating with fractions of mm margin of error then someone loses their function to speak/memorise/move…

No, they should be on paternity/ maternity leave, having a very young baby and doing this job are not compatible.
My boss is CFO and even she seems massively off her game with the lack of sleep and making questionable decisions/ finding it difficult to get the detail right. Have had to save quite a few big things from going wrong, whereas previously that was never the case.

Nothing wrong with taking 1+ year off with the baby, your job will likely pay very well for it and equally you can hopefully afford it x

Not in a million years

Is the brain surgeon not still on maternity leave? Hopefully by the time she is back at work the baby will sleep better.