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

[Mondaytuesdayhappydays]

Should a surgeon working full time, operating on patients each day be up with a baby at night doing 2/3 hourly feeds.

If they were operating in your child and had had only 3/4 hours sleep each night over the last fortnight would this be acceptable to you?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..?

Or the (male) brain surgeon's mother?

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.

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

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.

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!

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, but if they're a brain surgeon the household can presumably afford a night nanny.

Even at weekends, or when on annual leave?

How enlightening.

when working the next day in direct response to the OP! ( this could include weekends )

There's nothing that says brain surgeon like capitalising brain surgeon.

Absolutely not.
Of course they need to be rested.
I know one for many years, married to a nurse that fully understood that he needed full rest, particularly before surgeries.
They paid for help, that simple.

Or calling it a brain surgeon in the first place.

If the poster was one surely it would be neurosurgeon

Brain surgeon should pay for a night nanny on the nights before surgery.

As the mother of a son who has had two craniotomies, I would be horrified if I thought our surgeon was up in the night feeding the baby.

I know many individuals with jobs where appropriate decision making is critical. Including brain surgeons.

interestingly the only ones I’ve ever heard complain they can’t function if they have to tend to a baby are men.

lots of mothers coming in to work with a few hours sleep and operate professionally and expertly. Whilst their male counterparts expect a level of rest and relaxation that is both alien to virtually all mothers and a million miles from their requirements during the pre parenting days when they could pull all nighters, grab sleep on trolleys and apparently function impeccably if they’d been up all night shagging.

so interesting.

I’d suggest using the brain surgeon’s money to pay for mothers help overnight, for as long as you need it…

Or the mother could just do it. A Night Nanny ? are they just not for the royal family and mega rich. If you are on mat leave you have time to just look after the baby people have been doing it for generations

Why are you assuming that an NHS neurosurgeon is earning megabucks ?