Pre-nursing student aiming for ER NP - advice please!

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Hi there! Thanks for reading. This question is for ALL current NPs, particularly those who work in acute care settings---and if you work in the ER, I am VERY interested in your response!

I'm a student preparing to apply to programs this fall. I'm 30 years old, single, no kids; this is a career change for me, but I'd like to get it going as soon as possible. My parents are both physicians, as are one of my best friends (ED doc), and while I've dithered back and forth the past few years between med school, PA school, and nursing, I am feeling pretty firmly settled on nursing after lots of investigation and discussion. I have already taken 2 years of prereqs, and am just finishing up the last of them this fall (nutrition, abnormal psych, microbiology). I taught SAT & ACT test prep for Kaplan for years, so I'm not particularly worried about the GRE, though I have yet to take it.

I already have roughly 30k of undergraduate student loans (sigh). I ultimately want to be a nurse practitioner, ideally in acute care, particularly the ED, although I understand that a lot of people change their minds when they get hands-on experience. (I'm also interested in infectious disease/epidemiology/public health, and I am really attracted to the idea of travel nursing.) I'm debating between accelerated BSN/MN nursing programs (like the ones at U of Minnesota & Johns Hopkins, that are Master's level nursing preparation but not APN), and direct-entry NP programs, leaning slightly more towards BSN/MN first and then work for a few years, followed by NP degree.

My questions are as follows, for you nurse practitioners!

1.) Did you know right away which specialty you wanted to go into, or were you surprised when you found out you loved something you weren't initially attracted to?

2.) How hard/expensive was it to go back to school to get your NP? If I waited a few years of working with my BSN, I'm worried that things like paying off debt/having kids/buying a home would be difficult, which is one reason I'm thinking of direct entry & just getting everything out of the way.

3.) I understand that it can be difficult to work as an NP in the ER unless you have dual certification as FNP/ACNP, due to inability to see peds with just the ACNP most of the time. Is doing literally two degrees (or acceptance into a dual program, like Vanderbilt's) the only way to do this, or is there some kind of post-graduate certification I can get, say, a peds certificate to add to an ACNP that would qualify me? (I could totally be making this up. I apologize.)

4.) Do you have any other thoughts/recommendations for someone in my position? I honestly want to be done with school ASAP and start working and enjoying my job, but I don't want to screw myself over later in life, either.

Thanks so much for your time!