Planning advice needed

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I am hoping all of the lovely ladies and gentlemen at allnurses.com can give me some much needed career advice. As a background, I am 25, happily married for three years, live in Chicago, and went to art school for painting. I am strongly considering going into nursing as a career. This would mean doing all of my pre-reqs, probably some volunteer work to get in school, a bsn or gem program, and finally sweet sweet graduation. My husband and I are also strongly considering having (2) kids soon. I really want to be able to stay home with them when they are young (before preschool). Right now I am leaning towards having the kids now, doing pre-reqs slowly while they are young, and going to school full time when they start school. Am I setting myself up for major stress later on? I am fairly smart but I don't think I can just cruise through nursing school. Is it very hard taking time off and re-entering the field later on? I'd love to hear from people who have done both!

I had my son on Spring Break of my first year of nursing school (Good Friday), and the head of the program called me to say "congratulations on the birth of your son, and by the way, your Care Plan is still due Monday, so I will expect to see you then..." I handed my care plan in that Monday, to a round of applause from my classmates. At this time, I was married, had a 3 year old daughter who attended the nursing school's day care, and had a full time job as a cardiovascular technologist, beside attending nursing school full time...and guess what? Before anyone thinks how great this was: My husband was very unsupportive and resentful, and when I graduated the following year, now with a 4 year old and a 1 year old, we got divorced! It was me who initiated the divorce because I was so ****** off that he obviously did not share in my amitious plan to become a nurse in order to enable our family to have a better life. Oh well, just my two cents...and at least I was able to support myself and the children and even bought a house by myself (not from any wonderful divorce settlement either-we were broke...) a few years later! My advice is to be careful what you wish for-and make sure your partner fully understands what you are both getting into and all of the sacrifices involved....

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Specializes in Psych,Peds,MedSurg,Tele,OB,Subacute.

My advice as a mom of teens. (16,15,13 and 11) I wish i had started earlier. i even had my kids very young, i am only 32. When I was 18 i took a cna class which allowed me to work, but i just always wanted more....i wanted to be an RN so badly. well life took a turn after years and i divorced. having had that degree would have saved my kids and i fro alot of struggling. honestly hindsight being 20-20, my advice to you is get going on those pre reqs , like a PP mentioned you dont know how long it may take to get preggo, meanwhile you can be doing something constructive. my biggest regret is "wasting" that time. school IMHO is more difficult in many ways the older you get, we just arent quite the sponges we are in our teens and 20's. funny thing is it is harder to go to school NOW that my kids are older than it was when they were little!! go figure!! but yeah go for it, you dont have the distraction now and the sooner your have that degree the better, we cannnot ever know for sure what the future may hold for us. when my kids were little if you had told me i would be a divorced single mom one day i would have died laughing. little did i know the joke would be on me! i have now been remarried to the best man in the world for the last almost 7 years so i have my happy ending but i do wish i had stuck it out and got that degree. good luck to you whatever you decide :)

karla:)

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I had my son on Spring Break of my first year of nursing school (Good Friday), and the head of the program called me to say "congratulations on the birth of your son, and by the way, your Care Plan is still due Monday, so I will expect to see you then..." I handed my care plan in that Monday, to a round of applause from my classmates. At this time, I was married, had a 3 year old daughter who attended the nursing school's day care, and had a full time job as a cardiovascular technologist, beside attending nursing school full time...and guess what? Before anyone thinks how great this was: My husband was very unsupportive and resentful, and when I graduated the following year, now with a 4 year old and a 1 year old, we got divorced! It was me who initiated the divorce because I was so ****** off that he obviously did not share in my amitious plan to become a nurse in order to enable our family to have a better life. Oh well, just my two cents...and at least I was able to support myself and the children and even bought a house by myself (not from any wonderful divorce settlement either-we were broke...) a few years later! My advice is to be careful what you wish for-and make sure your partner fully understands what you are both getting into and all of the sacrifices involved....

When I decided to go back to school, I asked my partner a million times if he understood how demanding this would be on our family (we have 1 daughter), if he would fully be emotionally supportive of me during this time and understand that this entire family is signing up for this, not just me. Of course he's says, "yes yes of course, do what you need to do" and now while he makes an effort to tell me he is proud of me, etc. he still gripes about me wanting quiet time to study, not "paying attention" to our daughter when I am doing school work, complaining he never has time to go to the gym, etc because I'm always at work or in class, he gets mad if I can't go to the grocery store, cook dinner or help clean the house because he HATES to clean... and I get so frustrated.. if he's like this now with my pre-reqs, how will he be when I'm in the program? I'm worried that he just wants to see the RN paycheck come in but doesn't want to put forth the effort to get there. When I talk about the classes I need to take or what I am learning he just zones out. I told him that hurts my feelings because it makes me feel really alone and he says he just doesn't understand the stuff I'm talking about. :uhoh3: It's so stressful to do this when he's complaining. I hope it doesn't end up like what you went through, but he's got to get on board or get off the train, I am sick of him being so happy when I come home with A's but yet gets ***** when I need to go to a study group to get the A...

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Specializes in Home health was tops, 2nd was L&D.

My spouse was totally for my going to school, acted ok during school, after graduating..He told everyone "HE" put me thru school and I was his retirement plan. I had a loan and got scholarships for the rest! So when this all came to light, I came home told him" He was not vested.. he was fired with no retirement, and I had filed for divorce!!" Kicked his butt to the curb. I paid back my loan and raised my 3 kids by myself. RN degree allowed me to support them without too many struggles.

You can only count on YOU!! Do what you need to do to make yourself happy and plan for your future! If you get lucky and have support, great husband and everything else, rejoice!! :)

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OMG, lots of horror stories from moms. All I can say is that my partner better be behind me after me helping him through his own grad school craziness. Hopefully this time at least we won't be quite so broke :uhoh3:

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You have received lots of good advice.I have been in your situation and my advice is DONT! Like the other posters my husband said the same thing.We talked and planned for months,but when it came time to go to school..things changed.

My advice is to focus on one or the other and I would pick the career first..look at it this way-its easier to have a career then stop to raise the kids(u can even just go PRN to keep your skills up,maybe nights while the hubbie is W the kids)..Its harder to have kids first and then try to balance toddlers and study books.

You must also remember that some of your prereqs will not transfer after a certain amount of years..Most schools say 5 years for Science and some math,some schools say 3 years.

If I were you I would take all of the prereqs EXCEPT the Science classes now,get a CNA job to see how you like the field,then reevaluate the situation..

And remember ..preschoolers get sick A LOT and they cant go to school when they are sick..so if u do decide to do it have like 3 backup plans because parenting is sooo unpredictable...good luck!!!

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