Wishing I'd done Law instead of trying to help mums via the NHS

[treedelivery]

So this will be the only negativity I ever post, but GRRRRRRRRR

I crossed Law out and put Midwifery on my ucas form 10 years ago.
Now I am in a loving marriage with a wonderful man who was today made redundant after 13 years, who is a blue collar worker and therefore we are fairly knackered financially.

If only I'd gone for the career with prospects and earning potential, instead of thinking I could be nice to people and it would in some way feed my family. I've had 4 hours sleep after a night shift, been treated mainly with sarcasm and rudeness by all I've been in contact with through work [qoute - 'I've been on this phone for 23 rings trying to find out how my granddaughter is doing and it's a disgrace' - never mind that I couldn't answer the phone as was breaking my very pregnant back trying to get said granddaughter's baby to breastfeed - trying to support her in her choices] and if only I'd done law my earnings would mean we aren't trying to work out if we can save the car.

AIBU to think it isn't worth it for little thanks and rubbish working conditions and shouldn't I have chased the money and comfort and respect and lifestyle.

Am feeling like I need to duck - I know there are many worse off, I know many midwives/maternity services have really pissed off a lot of people on mumsnet and rightly so in many cases, but today I think I will allow myself an hour of letting the bile out.

It's never too late to retrain.

Can hubby find an interim job and you save to go to college?

Have only read the OP so apologies if these have been answered already.

And yes YAB a bit U - you are doing a fantastic job.

Think financial melt down and maternity leave etc will stop any retraining day dreams for a few years anyway. Would also probably have dh do that - as he is in low pay blue collar land and feels would like to do more with his brain.

Job doesn't feel too fantastic for -me- and mine at the moment - hopefully families I come across think I am doing this amazing job well, but I wish I'd done something better paid.

me

tut

I've not read any further than the first post. I'm ill and am on the way to bed.

I find most people are generally rude and angry when dealing with any kind of service role and, frankly, I've become desensitised to rudeness. I hardly deal with any new customers who are nice. (Although I did get an offer to go to Canada for 4 weeks and he wanted my phone number as he wanted to be my friend. Serves me right for asking him to take me with him)

Feel free to rant. Some people are rude and horrible and seemingly unable to appreciate what you do for them.
Son't feel the need to duck. You aren't talking about people who have reason to complain, you are talking about people who have been served well and are still rude and ungrateful.

I had wonderful experiences through 3 pregnancies and births.

I sympathise - am not in your field but in social work. As someone said back at the beginning of this thread, you 'watch your back daily for any mistake will be pounced on from a great height' - am misqouting I think but that's the gist. I totally understand your feeling of having taken the wrong path; I have to earn a certain amount in order to pay the mortgage so am pretty much trapped. If DH were rich there would be options but that is not the reality.

Can you try to go up the ladder rather than jumping off it? Into commissioning of services rather than delivering them, something like that?

I gave birth a week ago in a busy London hospital and the midwives were fab - kind, intelligent, in control and competent at all times and they were directly responsible for making my third birth by far my best (okay, thanks also to my baby for being so quick coming out!).

Dh and i could not say thank you enough (in fact, if you have any suggestions as to what we could do beyong writing a thank youcard, they would be appreciated).

So, sorry to hear about your husband's job and your horrid day but lots of us think you do an amazing job under what are often awful conditions. really hope thingks improve for you soon.

try writing to clinical director midwifery/chief exec.one of the high heid yins
google your trust website for names

congratulations on baby,smashing you had niceexperience

Tree - sorry to hear that about your husband's job and your money worries. I'd personally say that the grass is always greener. I have a law degree, have worked as a solicitor for 12 years and now just want to stay at home with my baby (and the one on the way) but people criticize me constantly for "giving up" my career (I just consider it on hold frankly) we've downscaled everything about our life so I can just be a Mummy and my parents for a start are furious. Sorry, that doesn't really help you but I just wanted to let you know how I felt about the law!

wow pramspotter that is totally out of order. It is a shame that there isn't a staff complaints board against obnoxious bastard patients, hey. mind you someone is bound to come out and say "oh they were having a bad day, their lo was not well, they were very stressed" - yeah, so that makes it ok to be so unutterably rude to the person looking after your lo, does it? I think NOT.

Write the letter:
I apologise that I was unable to get a drink for you while I was attending to an emergency crash situation. Had I realised how urgent your drink was, I would have let the other patient die whilst getting your drink.

(I hope you managed to save the arrestee, btw)

Pramspotter - can you imagine if you went into your lawyer/plumber/accountant etc and said what they said to you?

Be slung out and charged a few hundred for your trouble!

why do we have to put up with this?
Why do we apologise to people because they feel agressive and rude?
Why aren't we allowed to say 'one more word and you're out, disease/sick relative/sore foot/thirsty grandma or not.

Exactly. No other profession would take it.

I have also seen a lot posts on this forum from people who seem to think that nursing is a low skilled job. Therefore they think that we are doing it because we can't do any better.

Nursing education was hell. I had 2 previous degrees prior to attending nursing school and nursing school was harder academically and required a lot more sacrifice. A lot of people couldn't pass the course and many of them also had previous degrees that they sailed through. The admissions process was hard.

We spent many more hours in class than other 3 year degree course students. We had clinical placements as well on top of that. Nursing school may not be as tough as law school or medical school but it sure as hell is tougher academically than many other professions.

But I have seen posts on mumsnet that seem to imply that working as a care assistant in a nursing home is somehow similiar to being a nurse. I read posts that imply that nursing is an occupation that anyone can do if they can deal with shit and puke. It's no wonder we get treated like crap. People don't realise what it actually takes to legally be able to call yourself a nurse.

Just sick of people on this forum lumping nurses in with waitresses, hotel workers, care assistants, and hairdressers. It's no wonder our working environments are so abusive.

I hate to triple post but I also wanted to say that I think the term "nurse" is the problem.

Historically the word "nurse" means low skilled caring work. But these days the only way a person can legally call themselves "nurse" is if they attend 3 years at university, go through complete hell, become licensed with the professional nursing body (NMC) and take constant continuing education courses in order to stay licensed with the NMC.

Yet I am hearing people call their 18 year old niece who works in a nursing home as a carer "a nurse". WTF is wrong with people?

Then you have the fact that management takes advantage of the publics ignorance and hires care assistants to work on the wards with very few..too few actual nurses. The care deteriorates. But they get away with it because the public thinks that any female in a uniform caring for patients is a "nurse". Then the reputations of the nurses goes down the drain.

Combine this with the fact that patient acuity as gone off the charts in the last decade.....
I am a bit pissy tonight about it all.

Not read the whole post, but I am named after the Midwife who delivered me, her christian name is my middle name. My Mum must have thought she had done something right. 28 years later she still works in the same hospital as the boss of SCBU.

the last midwife i had while i was having a c section was fantastic, have a lot to thank her for.

All midwives are ANGELS! Who else has the dedication and love of a job to be looking at ladies bits and seeing quite gory sights sometimes. Hearing lots of swearing and screaming. But then you get to be there at the birth of another human being and that is worth all the crap you get!
If you had been a lawyer, ok you MIGHT have had more money but would you have been HAPPY deep down in your soul?
I'm sorry you DH has lost his job, fingers crossed he finds a new one soon

Good midwives are absolute angels in my opinion.

I had a horrendous first birth experience in a horrid, filthy hospital with really quite vile midwives (no amount of stress excused their horrible attitude ). I have probably ranted at length about it on Mn a dozen times.

However, with my second birth I had some complications and couldn't (literally couldn't) have done it without the fantastic care I received from all the midwives at the hospital. They were all fabulous. I still get tears in my eyes when I think about them. Wonderful, wonderful women, all of them.

I'm so sorry you are finding things tough at the moment, but please - don't doubt yourself. caring, competent midwives are the backbone of a good maternity service and crucial to a civilised society, in my books. You do a marvellous job, don't forget that.

Pram spotter whilst I kind of agree with what you are saying, can I just say that I am a care assistant and it annoys me a bit the way you put that post came across!

Care Assistants do a far far harder job than hairdressers, waitresses and hotel workers or whatever else you think is 'beneath you'.

Your post actually does exactly what you are moaning about! I have been bruised, bitten battered, sworn and been called seriously abusive names as well as sexually harrassed by visitors as well as residents. It is a dementia home I work in there si 60 patients all of whom have moderate to high grade dementia and alzheimers so it's not quite as easy as you seem to think it is. So I do apologise if someone in my work gets mixed up once in a while and calls me nurse I guess I should remember that I did not go to uni for 3 years, I wasted my time and did several childcare courses instead so should not be deemed worthy to call myself a nurse when I am doling out medication and dealing with injuries.

Care assistants are different from nurses not "inferior". That wasn't what I was implying. I often tell the care assistants I work with that their jobs take far more guts, brains, critical thinking skills and responsibility than many jobs. It is true.

The pointed I wanted to make was that a care assistant in a nursing home does not know what it is like to work as a nurse on an acute ward. There is no comparison.

The reason I said it was because there was mumsnetter on another thread basically saying that she knew what it is like to be a nurse because she worked as a care assistant in a home once upon a time. I was talking directly to her.

Sorry I must have read into it wrong

I do understand what you are saying though.

Also to OP YAB a little tiny bit U because MW are invaluable whilst lawyers well, we could probably do without some of them

I know times are tough at the moment we are quite skint too but as hard as it is you just have to keep your head up and ignore the crap that some idiots people throw at you.

Sorry about my grammar. Point is that it is illegal to use the term nurse if you are not registered with the NMC. If I cancel my registration and take a job as a care assistant in a nursing home I am no longer a nurse, nor am I legally allowed to call myself one.

No I would never call myself a nurse for many reasons I am not one and like you say it is illegal so why would I anyway?

Some people in my work get us mixed up all the time because our uniforms are quite similair and they are not able to see/tell the difference. So its not intentional and no I wouldnt have a clue what to do in an actual hospital ward.

having to put up with unpleasant and sometimes downright nasty abuse isnt restricted to the nursing profession. its a fallacy to think that in any other job you can just tell people to do one - you cant. not in my job, not friends who work in shops & call centres & have to put up with 20 kinds of crap & can never give it back or they lose their jobs, in fact no-one i know.

as was said earlier in this thread sadly rudeness, verbal & sometimes physical abuse is (very wrongly) now an inherent part of any job which involves dealing with the great british public.

treedelivery - second what SM said - have a look at HE opportunities. A friend at my university was a FT midwife, then went half-time while working on a research project, and then got a FT lecturing job in midwifery. Look at jobs.ac.uk.

And I hope things look up for you - I think it's a fantastic job that you do, but understand that people being grateful doesn't pay the gas bill...