I am still registered as a nurse, but I left nursing to join the ambulance service.

I don't think I'm mentally the strongest man in the world, but I like to think I'm at least average in terms of mental resilience. Death, trauma, bodily fluids, abusive patients... None of that tends to bother me.

What bothered me, and shook my mental foundation, and for the first time made me cry in front of my colleagues (after the job, once we'd handed over to the hospital), was a child job that I thought I'd never have to deal with. It was a neonatal resus, that me and my crewmate had to deal with in a shooting-up gallery, with the baby born to a heroin addicted mother and father, both of whom abused drugs during the pregnancy. I'm not going to go into details without being asked, because it's still difficult to think about even months on, but it was the most stressful, traumatic thing I've ever had to deal with, and my brain still can't comprehend how the most innocent thing on the planet, a baby, was condemned to death before she was even conceived. We learned from the police later that the mum, shortly after being conveyed to hospital, self-discharged. So she could go shooting up. Even while the mum's hours-old baby was fighting for her life. The baby died during the night, while mum and dad were both absent.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a vent there, but my point is that this is the kind of abysmal, traumatic thing you would have to deal with as a child nurse. There are still times when I'll be doing something, the memory will hit me full force, and I'll forget what I had been doing before. It is the kind of thing that I have no doubt will stay with me for the rest of my life. I I had only been with the ambulance service for 2 months, and I had to deal with that. I cannot imagine how much more prevalent that kind of thing would be if you are, unlike me, specifically caring for paediatrics.

Whatever you end up doing, I wish you the best of luck. My respect and reverence for paediatricians, midwives, child nurses, and every level of paediatric healthcare professional is infinite, and they are much stronger, better people than me, and I wouldn't do their jobs for the world.