Nursing & Family Life?

[loverofall]

Hello, I'm currently a pre-nursing student and have some questions about the career I'm pursuing and being able to be a mother. I want kids when I graduate nursing school (abt 23/24 y/o), God willing, in 4 years. My question is when I do hopefully become a mother, I don't want to work at all until the baby is a toddler. I want to be there for my baby all the time. In my culture, taking kids to daycare isn't a norm and that's how I've always wanted it to be like. I know all of this will depend on my significant other and if we'll be financially stable to live off of one income (I'm single as of now, so like I said a lot of this will depend on when I get married/etc). I know I'm still young (and naive) but I just want some insight into the career I'm pursuing and if being able to completely stop working after NS will be a smart choice. But I know for sure that I don't want to work when I have kids. I also want to become an advanced practice nurse (which is the main reason I chose nursing in the first place) but I'm finding that juggling more school and kids won't be for me so as of now it's an end goal for the far future & I know I'll always be able to go back to school but I can never turn back the clock to spend more time with my (future) babies.

[87RN]

My advice would be to wait to have kids until you have at least one year experience working as a nurse. It would be hard finding your first job as a new grad as it is but a nurse with no experience that long out of school would have a much harder time. I'm not too familiar but there are also rules about inactive licenses that you may want to look up depending on how long you are planning to stay home.

[naptimeRN]

I agree with the above advice. Try to get a year in if you really can. Then maybe you can even go per diem and work very minimally, but still have your foot in the door and still be getting experience. The beauty of nursing is that there is a lot of options in terms of jobs and job schedules that can work for families.

For examples: Growing up my father had a "normal" M-F day job, and my mother (an RN) worked 11-7 per diem. We rarely had to have sitters and never needed to go to daycare because of this and my mother got to spend a lot of time with us. Now that she is an empty nester, she works a per diem day job. I work a part time day shift job and a per diem hospital gig. I could always only work the per diem gig when I have kids if I want.

So my point here is there are lots of options! Especially once you get that year in! But for now...focus on school and your goal of becoming a nurse. Then you can focus on getting a job. If having a family happens somewhere in there, so be it, your life will adjust. Once you have been working for a bit and depending on where you are in terms of family life, then you could consider an advanced degree. It's all steps and will fall into place. I understand that you are just trying to think and plan ahead, but I think you are a bit ahead of yourself. One day at a time :)