Teaching or Midwifery

[Beth199]

I'm 28 years old and struggling to decide whether to keep on track with a possible teaching career or change to midwifery 🤔

Bit of background... I've got two kids, 10 year old and 1 year old, after having my 10 year old I just stuck with simple jobs, first waitressing then retail but I've always hated it. I decided to look into Primary Teaching so started an undergraduate degree, which I recently finished the first year but I'm not sure this is actually what I want to do.
For as long as I can remember I've wanted to be either a Primary Teacher or a Midwife and now is the time I want to make my final decision.

I chose Teaching because I thought it would be easier with having kids, working school hours, holidays off etc. But that's obviously not how it is, lesson planning, marking at home etc, you end up working more than that. On the other hand Midwifery involves night shift, holiday working etc.
Although I'm more interested in Health Visiting, so the night shifts and such would only be whilst training.

If everything went perfectly 🤦‍♀️ I'd qualify as a teacher in 3 years, midwifery would be 4 years as I'd have to do a science Access course first, and then an extra year after for Health Visiting, so 5 in total. But I think I would like healthcare work more than school work.
Theres also the fact that my current health visitor for my son has helped me with my Postnatal Depression so so much, I'd love to help others in this way too.

How do you decide what you want to do when you grow up, nearing 30 now feels like I need to decide quick!

Do not do teaching.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Do not do teaching.

Would love to hear your reason for this 😊

Firstly you can do Health Visiting (SCPHN) after nursing and actually they like paediatric nurses the most as it's child based, but take midwife's , adult nurses and mental health nurses. Health Visiting is a highly competitive course to get onto and is a very tough year. Its an MSc with a massive workload of acedemic work alongside the practical placement.
Midwifery is not as lovely as everyone thinks trust me if that baby dies or gets into difficulty and is brain damaged ( and it does happen) it is always the midwife s neck. Midwifery is hard to get onto but has a massive drop out rate. Also very tough on the back. If you like the idea of helping women with PND why don't you do mental health nursing?
You will likely need some clinical experience before applying for The SCPHN course and be pretty robust the job is actually mostly child protection now.
I can't comment on teaching but you get holidays off so that sounds nice.

Teaching has broken mine and many many others mental health.

Soneone in here described teaching as being in an abusive relationship. I think it was an excellent comment.

Constant never ending scrutiny, observations, pressure to be more than perfect, Ofsted, and the fun of accountability. Where even though your pupil may speak little English of live in an abusive home you’re expected to get them a grade 9 when it clearly isn’t possible. But your meant to do it and if you don’t your job is on the line. For all the students in your class.

I loved the pupils and the act of teaching. That’s about 10% of the job now, when it should be 90%

I went from working shifts to primary teaching. Yes teaching is demanding but I often bring marking home and work once DDs are in bed. Shift work with young kids was very difficult, I was always tired. With teaching although you'll work long hours there is a degree of flexibility about when those hours actually are, plus you get the benefit of being off for the school holidays rather than having to scramble to find childcare.