Most nurses are female. Given that women have babies it is reasonable to think that many nurses will have a baby or two at some point in their career. It would seem to make sense that the Nursing profession would be very supportive of women and the challenges of being a working mother, right?

Before I had my baby, I always supported the mothers I worked with by covering their patients while they pumped if they were breastfeeding or by letting them leave if they had a sick child or some other childcare issue. Since I had my first child, I have been supported by my colleagues in turn, but realized just how systematically unfriendly the nursing profession can be to working mothers.

When it came to pumping breastmilk while at work, I found that we were often so short staffed that pumping had to be delayed to the point that my milk supply and ability to provide milk for my baby was compromised. As supportive as my colleagues were, they had to assume care of lll my patients for 15 minutes every three hours so I could do this.

Furthermore, there was no physical place for me to pump. I had to search for an empty hospital room, occupy the bathroom, or hope some administrator with an office was not at work that day. When I did pump in a patient room, I prayed no one would ignore the sign on the door and come in.

When it came to juggling childcare, as a part-time employee it was not practical or economically feasible for me to have full time day care, as a result I needed a basically set schedule in order to be able to work and have child care. My manager told me that I needed to have complete availability and she was not able to accommodate my child care schedule. In the preceding 6 months I was one of the highest rated nurses in the department by this same manager. In addition, several working mother had vacated their positions because their child care needs limited their availability on certain days of the week. This was very difficult for all of us because we all loved our jobs and had been as flexible as humanly possible. At the same time, we were replaced by younger models with no children and a lot less experience.

I understand how difficult making a schedule can be when people have limitations, but the nursing shortage will only worsen if attempts to work with the needs of working parents are not included in our strategy for retaining nurses. I had even found a nurse who would job share with me so we could each work set days of the week, but that was not enough for the administrators. I attempted to have complete availability for a while, but I was spending so much time trying to juggle my schedule and have make sure I had childcare. In addition, my manager would release the schedule about a week before it started and coordinating child care at the last minute is near impossible. So I gave up my part-time job in favor of part-time PNP school and working PRN. I have a set schedule and child care but miss my job and they have a job vacancy it will take them months to fill.