better career choice midwifery/ secondary teaching/ot

[amykour]

please help me to decide better career choice between these three as im nearly 35 , spent my years in retail and customer service but now after kids i want some stability and a professional career.

You’ve put this in Carers rather than Careers. You might want to ask MNHQ to move it for you. (Just report your own post, and ask.)

It'll help too if you say what qualifications you’ve got - esp things like Maths & English GCSEs, A levels etc, and confirm what country you’re in. And good luck!

OT

All three of these are exceptionally hard, low paid careers which people are currently leaving in droves. At 35, with kids, I'd consider something else. Or if you're set on these three options, I'd go for OT.

I think all 3 are actually quite reasonably paid as you go up the levels. They're quite different careers though so you need to look into each one more and perhaps discuss with people from each profession. I'd personally go OT. Retention in teaching is unbelievable really (there's a great facebook group called life after teaching full of people leavinv and people talking about what they've gone on to do!)

I wish Id known more about OT when younger as I think its great with a very varied career path -lots of different specialties and often more regular hours than teavhing or mw. I have mw friends who love it though...

I'm a midwife. Depends what you mean by "stability" - my job is pretty secure in the sense that there's always jobs for midwives, but my hours change every week. There is NO pattern to the rota other than I get one set clinic day every week. I had to fight for that and it was recently changed to a different day with very little notice.
The training is 3 years where you get very little input into your hours. Now I'm qualified I get slightly more flexibility - I can make requests for my shifts / days off, and can try and swap unwanted shifts with colleagues - but i still usually end up with some nights. I work a lot of weekends too.
It's work that's tiring in all senses - it can be very physical. Mentally challenging trying to make decisions and remember things. Emotionally exhausting, I give a lot of myself every day.
That said, I still love my job and I'm very lucky to work in a supportive unit which is relatively well-staffed but this is not the case for many (most?) maternity units in the country, I'm sorry to say. I've worked in others and now I would never leave mine as I know how good I've got it.
I still am passionate about what I do and that's what keeps me going. People who don't really really love it usually drop out during the course. There are loads of applicants for midwifery as well, so unis can be very picky about who they take - you'll need relevant experience (not just "I gave birth to my kids") and likely an access course with good grades unless you have other recent relevant study.

I know in my university we have 600 applicants for 40 midwifery places. It tends to be the top grade students or if mature a very good range of experience.

These are three very different jobs that require very different skills, what draws you to each one?

Secondary teaching - what subject, what experience and qualification do you have? . Get experience as a TA, cover supervisor or instructor first and your school may pay for your teacher training.
Teaching is not family friendly though and expect to work to 10/11 pm a lot in your first few years, teaching needs to be viewed as atleast 6 hours x 190 days in office +2/3 WFH most nights and at least 2/3 days WFH in the holidays. Out of the 8 student placements we've had in our dept in the last 5 years 6 of them finished their training, only one of them is still teaching.

Midwifery - you'll need a degree, get experience as a HCP first. I imagine it's not overly family friendly with shift work so you'll need solid childcare. Working for the NHS is not a bed of rosesm

Alternatively have you thought about ed psych or speech therapy? Avoid teaching if you can it's a vocation and not family friendly. Some teachers I know want to get into the two jobs above.

@SpinMeARiver Thanks for heads up, I'll do that
Also i have done bachelors in information technology from India, im currently in Australia and im an Australian citizen as well but i was never interested in computers at all just did it for anyway, also i hv 98.5 ATAR and no issues in getting the midwifery course, but just very confused to choose which one?

@MolliciousIntent Thanks for your reply, but i didnt get low paid jobs as when i search on internet midwives, OTs and even teachers are highly paid jobs around minimum annual salary starting from $85000 and experienced going upto $100000
is there something I'm not reading right? or its wrong information just getting very conscious

@SickKid Thanks for ur reply, would really appreciate an elaborated answer please, it will help me in decision making.

Oh so not in the uk or intending to train or practice in the uk? Where are you intending to train/practice?

Well you're on a UK site, in the UK starting salary for a teacher is about £26k, so $45k ish. If you want information that is relevant to you, you'd be better off posting on an Australian forum.

The best place to ask MNHQ to move your thread to would be the Mature Study and Retraining board, here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/mature_students

You’ll find it helpful!

I think you need a new thread with Australia in the title or post on an Australian board as it will be quite different to here.

what is OT ?

OT = Occupational Therapist

Thanks Everyone for your responses and I have just realised its not an Australian site. Apologies again for not mentioning that as I thought it should be fine to get some general views from all.

Of course it’s fine to ask for opinions - insofar as you think they’ll be relevant to your location and specific work culture.

The board I linked above is entirely dedicated to people trying to move into new careers as adults.