If you’re married to a surgeon please tell me if you think I’m being unfair?

[Likao]

I am 40 and we have 1 dc age 2. I do everything for dd in terms of nursery runs, packing bags, ensuring dd has new shoes that fit, taking her to appointments etc. Any admin you can think of, I do.

i also work full time from home, so I have flexibility which is why I do nursery etc. At weekends DP will take dd out from 10ish to 4pm ish on a Saturday or Sunday so I can have a break. I don’t think this is ok or enough and I’m starting to get really pissed off that everything is left to me.

if I ask DP to do a specific task like put a wash on or pick up some food then he will. But what infuriates me is there is NEVER a sense of urgency from him to be home at a reasonable time and he would absolutely never ensure he was there to collect dd from nursery for example. I have to cut my data short often to collect her if unwell but he literally does not think he can do this because he can’t just leave patients (in his words). Obviously I know that there is a difference with his job but I am absolutely at the end of my tether tonight and very upset he’s been at work since 6am and not even asked how I’ve got on with dd and her bedtime (she’s very difficult at the moment). It’s making me very unhappy and feel very alone. It’s caused loads of arguments the last few weeks as I feel totally put upon. I don’t feel I have an equal relationship and the only answer I get back is that his job means he can’t do more. I’m sick of it all, should I expect more, is it fair?

Your daughter was advised by a dinosaur. I knew before I got to the word "he" that it would be a man giving that advice.

As a consultant, (although not an anaesthetist) the working pattern is far better than when you are a trainee. As anaesthetic depts are usually very large, although as a consultant , you are far more likely to be called/have to attend overnight, the frequency is much less than when you are a registrar, and you don't do runs of nights like a registrar does - you won't be doing Monday-Thursday nights, you'll do one of those nights, and have appropriate arrangements for time off immediately afterwards. In addition, the flip side of doing nights on call mean that you can reach your working week total hours pretty quickly so you will often have 1 or 2 days off in the week, so much more ability to do pick ups/spend time with the kids than a 9-5 Monday-Friday work pattern, where you will need to book time off for pick ups/events etc all the time (leaving aside the fact that even though the official hours will be 9-5, all consultants do more than that).

Less than full time training is a thing as well, and will always be given for childcare reasons.

If I were asked, I would simply discuss anaesthetics or any specialty in trems of what you wanted your working life to look like. Some people would never want to be called/called in overnight even if they don't have children, so specialties like anaesethetics/ED would not be a good fit for them. Some people would hate doing lots of sitting in clinics, so specialties like neurology would be a bad fit. Some people want to do lots of procedures, so surgery or some of the more procedural medical specialties would be a better fit. Plus, some specialties like GP that don't do nights once they have completed training unless they choose too, have other stresses that many people would find intolerable.

Clearly some of those things are easier if you don't have children, but the blanket idea that if you have children you should be steered away from some specialties is just rubbish.

Every career in medicine/surgery is do able by a woman- it might require you to train differently - not standard route, take a little longer and be more flexible in some aspects of your training - only men stoop to the age old - not suitable for women comments.

Its actually really good for kids actually as its a sessional job, each day is completed and the pt is fine or in icu so don't have the continuity of care that ward drs need. Sooo easy to go part time, I'm in a minority now at not being part time, nearly everyone is 80% full time as thst drops you to an average of 40h a week. But yeah we aren't gonna have the work life balance of derm, but I still think it's way more fun

Yuck. What awful advice.

My husband loves his job as an anaethetist but my god those FRCA exams 😮‍💨 I know all specialty exams are hard but wow I'm a complete FRCA widow these days

Training years are hard though and unfortunately fall during the most optimum baby making years !