Nursing Student Military Spouse/2 kids; advice please.

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Hi all,

Anyone with similar experience that could give some advice on how to manage?

I'm fairly new to this forum. I read about someone who is/was in nursing school as a military spouse and had a similar question to mine, but I need some in-depth help here.

Background story: I was recently in my first semester of nursing school (LPN) this past spring, but my husband was deployed and too much kept happening so I withdrew. The program I am a part of has strict rules of absences, for reasons I completely understand. I have two children, 2.5 and 9 months. Where I live is a small town and children in daycares seem to get sick all of the time ( I know this is everywhere, but RSV and stomach viruses seemed to keep circulating in town). My children had gotten Hand Foot Mouth Disease, a stomach virus, and many colds while I was in school for 5 weeks. With my husband gone, I would pay someone to come stay with my kids while I went to class on days they were sick. This ended up getting costly, and I ended up getting sick as well. The final straw was HFMD, and I just withdrew to care for my children. I also breastfed my son and pumped, but due to all the stress I lost a substantial amount of weight and also my milk supply dropped (I have since replenished my supply). I knew I wasn't able to put in the work at the time, and so I decided to return this coming fall semester.

I'm returning in the fall but my concern is more geared towards the following Spring 2017 semester. Looking like my husband will deploy again, and I will have odd clinical hours as a semester 2. The school said clinicals could be anywhere from 1400-2300 which I know will be hard to find care up to 2300 hours. I don't know who can watch my children, but would work it out.

After all of this, I would like to know if anyone has gone through a similar situation with juggling kids, childcare, school/clinical hours, and deployments? How did you manage it without family nearby to help? How did you manage your time with your children? I would put my kids to bed at 7, go to sleep myself until midnight, study until 5 am when I had to get ready for the day as well as study after class. My husband is thinking school should be put off, but I really want this. I'm already accepted into a program, and I want to finish it before we move next year in July. This is just another hurdle and need a lift with advice. Also, I know that some single moms out there have to go through more than I do, and so if you have advice and aren't military I am very open to any and all words of wisdom.

TIA!

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I'm a military wife and mother of 2. I just graduated with my ASN. We have no family where we live but I have amazing friends. Honestly, I can compare nursing to the life of being military. You have to have a strong family care plan. Kids get sick. Day cares won't take them. You miss clinical/class/tests. It's added stress to an already VERY stressful situation. My husband is gone a lot, but I had multiple people that were dependable back ups. If you have someone, preferably multiple people, you can rely on that you KNOW will be there to help with your kids, then go for it. If not, I'm gonna have to agree with your husband. If you go for it, It's going to require a lot of help and support from him and others to help with the kiddies. You'll miss a lot of family time but keep telling yourself that this is only temporary. Not to mention, they are still young enough to not remember that mommy ditched them to study[emoji33] I wish you the absolute best. I'm rooting for ya

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Specializes in ICU.

I waited until my son was in school all day and even then I could not have done it without the support of friends. I am a single mom. I filed for divorce and signed up for school in the same week.

The he reason I waited because when he was younger I knew he would never understand when mom had to study and wanted to be played with. I scheduled my prereqs around his school schedule but all bets were off when I started the program. I had to have backups for my helpers. I had to be very organized at all times.

I've graduated and start a job on Monday. I'm now engaged so I've got better support. Even with this job though, the training has mandatory hours for the first six weeks and I'm having to rely on people again to help. To get my son to and from school and when school is ending, to watch during the day. He's been asking since I picked him up from school to play ball with him and go on a walk. I'm trying to study for NCLEX. No rest for the weary.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

MILSO and single mom here. Starting school in the fall and my partner is currently deployed. I agree with your husband, I think school should be put off until the kids are older. I can't imagine going through the stress of a deployment + single parenting two kids under the age of 3 + nursing school! If you do decide to go forward, you're going to need a big, stable support system. I live near my parents and my mom is always available to take my child if school gets cancelled for her or if she's sick and I still need to go to work. I'm also a member of a church here and have been able to get childcare help from that resource if for whatever reason my mom is unavailable.

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Hi, I made a group for Military Spouse Nurses so we can help each other out with things like this! Log into Facebook | Facebook

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