In this blog, small animal vet Sian Burwood explores the overlap between parenting and veterinary practice, where empathy, negotiation and emotional labour are constant companions. She considers compassion fatigue, changing identities and the adjustments needed to sustain both family life and a veterinary career.
“I can see that this makes you really upset.
That’s ok, it’s understandable when things don’t turn out as you expected.
We do need to make a decision here to help everyone.
………so darling, please, do you want the Bluey shirt or the stripey shirt so we can just get to nursery on time?”
Parents everywhere will recognise this kind of daily negotiation, the endless gentle manipulation to get your small people to perform basic tasks to get them safely through the day, preferably clothed and preferably fed, all whilst you are chronically sleep deprived. If you’re also a vet, then chances are you recognise this kind of interaction as a feature of your working life too, albeit with different choices.
Returning to work
I returned to work after shared parental leave when my first child was nine months old. I returned full-time, feeling very lucky with my 4 day week, supportive bosses, excellent nursery and local family. I could have it all! I could use my brain and be a vet and be a mother too!
Motherhood made me a better vet
At first, this seemed to be the case. Being a vet made me a better mother, and being a mother made me a better vet; I appreciated each role all the more for having time away from it. I have always been an empath, but parenthood took this up a notch. Every owner struggling to listen to me whilst their child hung off their leg, every client who was explaining their dog was overweight because the baby was weaning…I got it all on a new level, and my treatment plans were changing accordingly to help these parents. The realities of my new routine actually helped me with setting boundaries at work; I no longer agreed to all the extras because I had to leave for pickup.
The balance was reasonable until my girl became a toddler. An issue with deliberately raising strong independent women is that they become strong and independent from birth, and my non-violent communication skills were being put to the test before, during and after work. The scales were starting to tip.
Balancing a challenging work and home life
Three years later and I went on leave with my second child, again returning to work eight months later on my four day week. It didn’t take long for the cracks to start to show. Having small children involves many elements of drudgery, and the day was bookended with those same routines, over and over. Work felt like I was continually trying to get the clients to do something, anything resembling what I was advising. My patience for listening to their individual circumstances was waning, or I’d find that I was using so much of my emotional energy being pleasant to clients, I was then becoming the shouty mum when I got home. My day ‘off’ no longer involved a time where I could be silent with my own thoughts as my big girl no longer napped, instead requiring endless attention and snacks. The baby was just a baby, a typical feral second child. It was not a good place, and I felt as if I was failing at being a mother, a vet, and card-carrying feminist all at once. It all came to a head that summer of 2023 after saying goodbye to my dog who had been with me since my first job (predating both the husband and kids) but was in end-stage congestive heart failure. I was riddled with guilt and grief, frustrated at more housework thanks to diuretic side effects, and found the decision for euthanasia much less straight forward than I had anticipated.
Flexibility at work
So am I still in that place? I decided to compress my hours after a small amount of constructive case feedback caused the floodgates to open. This means long days but better separation between vet days and childcare days. A year later and I am reducing my clinical work further as my veterinary writing career takes over, the diversification providing the mental stretch I need.
Therapy has been really helpful for dealing with a completely unexpected part of parenthood; namely that the mere act of having your own children makes you confront the way you were parented yourself. Millennials everywhere are now trying to parent their own children whilst reparenting themselves; trying to reassure the grandparents that we don’t think they had it all wrong but we’d like to do some things differently. All this emotional work to be done can be another layer of compassion fatigue.
A message to others
To any soon-to-be parents out there; you are not alone. It will be different, and that’s ok. Self-compassion helps to ease the compassion fatigue, and it’s worth looking at the new research that shows it is in fact empathy fatigue we are suffering from. Most importantly, everything is a phase. You don’t have to ride it out – make the changes that you need for you and your family.
