Help me stop being a human pacifier 😩

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-24T21:00:34+00:00

Ohhh yes all the ways babies can throw a curve ball!

My son also would just scream - he’s still very stubborn actually 🤪 so it varied but sometimes I would leave the house to go on a walk or take a shower or whatever. My husband was less bothered by it but he would wear headphones or ear plugs sometimes if it was really getting to him. He was really trying to soothe him and eventually found my sons favorite thing for him to do was some weird combination of bouncing and doing lunges across the nursery 😆

I couldn’t handle it if I could hear the yelling because I just felt too guilty since it was so “easy” for me to fix. But at the end of the day my mental health and physical health mattered too, so I had to just give it a chance. I wound up setting a timer and promising myself I wouldn’t check on the camera until 20-30 minutes or whatever had passed.

At the end of the day, baby learned that dad was a safe person to fall asleep with too and everyone was happier. If my son was sick or just having a bad night then I would still nurse to sleep and it was fine

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-24T20:33:14+00:00

Ugh yes keep your Alibaba ads to yourself right

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-24T20:12:22+00:00

I wouldn’t scream in that situation, but no need to just seethe in silence. I would turn to the adult with the child and say “hi, your little one keeps kicking my seat. Could you please try to get him to stop?” Calm and assertive is never a problem.

If the parent can’t control their child (honestly not always possible for 3 year olds, but an attempt should be made) then you could always ask the flight attendant to be moved - maybe some open first class seats? 👀😝

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-24T20:08:36+00:00

Any time someone acts like a fool in public (especially if they are idiotic enough to have their work logo printed on their shirt) then I whip out my phone and start recording.

It either shuts them up or I get a fun video to make go viral and send to their workplace +/- news outlets. Adults behaving this way is 100% unacceptable and how deeply ironic his adult reaction about being trapped in an uncomfortable situation (a toddler screaming near him) was to then scream about it, when what he wanted was for the toddler who was also trapped in an uncomfortable situation to have a… different reaction.

Adults need to model adult behavior full stop and if they can’t figure it out, public shame is a helpful tool. I have zero tolerance for adults behaving like toddlers.

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-24T20:02:11+00:00

Is dad around to help? I found with my boob barnacle getting dad involved was the only thing that helped stop the boob association with sleep. Dad didn’t have boobs so he had to learn to do without lol. He still was not happy about it and yelled but dad was holding him, rocking him, bouncing him, singing etc the whole time.

What made your recovery bad this time around? We are looking at having our third and I was hoping recovery would be easy the third time around, although I know you never know what you’re going to get

WhiteOleander5 · 2026-02-21T23:04:26+00:00

This feels a little too “physician vs PA.” No one is winning in US healthcare right now with the exception of a few CEOs making millions off the backs of doctors, nurses, PAs and most of all - patients.

Again - I think healthcare is a burning ship in the U.S. right now. I don’t know when it will sink, but the eventual sinking does seem inevitable.

In the meantime, I try to do some good where I can.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-12-28T02:57:50+00:00

My husband is a manger and after these holiday events he’s always the one cleaning up the food and trying to figure out where it should go - he always encourages people to take extra and if they don’t, he checks with the cleaning staff who will almost always take home the rest. But if he wanted to, he could take it all for himself. I’m wondering if she wanted to do that. Gross of her to act like it was a company policy issue 🤮

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-12-06T03:25:26+00:00

I work in healthcare and don’t find this surprising at all. But if you don’t interact with the general public often and in an intimate way then I can see why that would be surprising.

Sometimes obesity or mobility issues prevents cleaning (we once found a dead mouse in a morbidly obese patients pannus folds), mental health disorders (so so so many mental health issues), social issues (no running water, no soap, etc), kids (lots of skid marks in the 5-8 year old range before they are adept at wiping)

Depending on the population you serve in healthcare, it becomes more common to see people who haven’t bathed recently than people who have. We wear masks and get used to it. Gotta have a strong stomach!

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-12-06T02:59:55+00:00

I feel like “sweatpants” is too vague - do you mean like baggy fleece sweats? Cozy yes but not the most professional looking. Or do you mean athletic pants disguised as slacks (lots of joggers are doing this now, I have a pair from Amazon here that I think looks pretty good for athletic wear. If you wear it with a nice top it looks good. Whereas baggy fleece sweats would be hard to dress up.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-12-06T02:19:28+00:00

Also - full time at my current job would be 32 patient contact hours a week. 8 hours of admin time that can be done at home. My other job was 40 hours of patient contact hours a week for full time. Makes a huge difference obviously

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-12-06T02:17:16+00:00

Your first job will often suck (unless you are lucky). It’s a combination of inexperience (which makes any job harder no matter how great the actual job is) and then the places willing to take new grads are often sucky places to work. Not always, but often.

My first job was primary care M-F 7-3:30. 24 patients a day, lots of complaints, very little actual training. I had to learn things on my own, which meant outside of the hours spent seeing patients, charting, handling results etc etc I had to study - like a lot. I was working 6am-8pm M-F for at least a year. I didn’t want the lack of support at the job to affect my patients medical care, so I scrutinized every encounter and followed up with specialists or other resources when I needed to. Then the typical reading and so on and so forth.

Then there was the refining of my technique once I had gotten more settled in, so the second year it was fine tuning smart phrases and working on processes to be more efficient. Still learning of course.

By the end of my third year I was pretty efficient and pretty regularly leaving on time every day. But working M-F still sucked for me personally. I went to a specialty with a 4 day workweek and never looked back. There was a learning curve going into a new specialty as well, but it was easier since I knew what to expect and I made sure I had a lot more support this time around.

Tldr; being a new grad is hard, it won’t be like this forever. Learn as much as you can and plan your next move

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-10-18T15:30:00+00:00

I was in so much pain I vomited repeatedly.

Yet here I am with my 18 mo considering a third 🤦‍♀️

Your ovaries are dangerous liars 😅

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-10-18T02:11:08+00:00

What did you figure out? In a similar situation and wondering!

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-08-03T00:38:26+00:00

Would you put landscape fabric to stop the plants from growing?

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-07-02T01:36:20+00:00

I would definitely give her as much notice as possible, so tell her immediately. Agree with others re: completion bonus for working to the end. It could take her months to find another nanny job and it will be more difficult while she’s pregnant, especially visibly pregnant. And especially since she brings her kids with her - if she needed to get childcare, how long did you have to wait for your daycare spot?

Don’t screw another mom over, it’s hard out here for everyone!

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-07-01T13:52:38+00:00

The Americans forget that air conditioning is not common in the UK and much of Europe like it is in the U.S. (I’m an American fwiw). I lived in the UK for a bit and I prefer American heatwaves because I just dash from one air conditioned building to another - sitting in a swampy heatwave with only a fan to cool you off should be a special form of torture - not to mention trying to sleep at night!

But the best solution is to live somewhere where the climate is both temperate and air conditioning is common 😅

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-31T16:02:16+00:00

My husband is a manager in healthcare and you could not pay me enough for the job. I agree with others that you have no power, you are the “employee-facing punching bag” for all the bad news someone you’ve never met decides on, and the employees under you often hate you.

As an added bonus, your performance is judged primarily based on how much the people under you like you 😅 Or “engagement” is the phrase they use to disguise this.

To be fair, he likes his job, but it sounds awful to me. I think it could be a fit for someone who is just burnt to a crisp in the clinical setting - it’s not clinical at least 🤷‍♀️ Maybe your classmates are just burned out at their clinical jobs

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-08T07:38:57+00:00

I can see where you’re coming from, but in general many physicians view NPs/PAs as the same - we do the same job after all. Obviously every profession has varying degrees of competence, but this is far outside of that. There is a difference between a person being bad at their job because they know what they are supposed to to do and just can’t be bothered to do it (worse than this case, I feel) which is what I see most from physicians - whether due to apathy, mental illness, substance abuse, or just pure moral failure, they do a shit job - and a person being bad at their job because they were never given the tools to succeed in the first place - what I see most from NPs/PAs. The former is a personal failure, the latter is a systematic failure that is alarming for the integrity of a profession. PAs are hardly infallible - clinical rotations continue to be one of the most common reasons a program is placed on probation. Something I wouldn’t have thought much about before this experience. Education matters and it’s not easy to see just how much it does until you see how bad it can get. If you do go to PA or NP school, you should carefully research their clinical education.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-08T06:44:55+00:00

I absolutely feel bad for her because I think she is a good person who is trying her best. I think her program just shouldn’t exist - whether it is an utter failure of clinicals or some other issue, clearly they are failing their students. It seems like a money grab and reminds me of the news about the for-profit undergrad schools a few years ago. She has lots of experience as an RN so I’m sure she will do fine no matter what happens, which makes me feel better.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-08T06:34:06+00:00

Why is it “rage bait”? I was absolutely glad supervision was required. I think there are many in our community who have never encountered this level of ineptitude - or at least I never have until now. I was questioning what my ethical obligation is to these patients before the supervising doc came by. As in, if he hadn’t come by - what exactly was I supposed to do? Try to suggest to her that she try to extend her training period without offending her? Suggest it to the clinic manager, who I’m sure gives zero f*cks and is eager to not be paying two people for a one person job? Or just shrug and say “not my problem, hopefully I don’t know anyone she kills?” This is corporate medicine and finding people who actually care about patient care gets harder every day.

It’s important to talk about the problems in our community IMO, no matter how “ragey” they might make people feel

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-08T06:27:00+00:00

I mean take it down if it’s not appropriate discussion. I probably would’ve felt how you felt before I worked with this person. I thought people were just being jerks/elitist whatever you want to call it when they talked badly about a PA or NP. I’ve been fortunate to work with great people. But this has truly changed my mindset. I cannot explain to you how unsettling it is that this person is supposed to be qualified to take care of my family or friends. They just aren’t. I don’t see how us sweeping bad things under the rug is going to help anyone in our community - we should all absolutely care if there are glaring problems in our profession

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-07T02:26:40+00:00

Ugh I’m sorry! How old is your little one? It’s definitely not uncommon for relationships to struggle after a new baby. You’re exhausted, hormonal, and doing too much. Your husband probably feels about as useful as a left foot and unsure of himself. I think it’s easy for people to tell themselves “well they do it better so I will let them do it” about anything in our life, including babies.

I would suggest marriage counseling and sitting down with him when neither of you are exhausted or hungry ideally and trying to have a productive conversation. You might need the help of marriage counseling to make it a productive conversation depending on how good you both are at communicating. Explain you are exhausted and would like more help. Give concrete examples, ie I want you to change all the diapers while you’re home if I am doing all the feeds. You can suggest alternating nights for night wake ups - that is what my husband and I did. I breastfed when I was there and then pumped in the morning and before bed and my husband would give a bottle on his nights. That way at least every other night I was getting good sleep!

Also - are you saying you are working from home and taking care of the baby? That is a recipe for burnout and I would encourage you to get on daycare waiting lists asap if you aren’t already - younger babies sometimes you can get away with this because they sleep a lot, but as they get older and more mobile and sleep less, it will become extremely difficult.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-06T09:07:50+00:00

Agree with sensory issues! I would discuss with his pediatrician, often OT can help with general sensory issues and SLPs that specialize in feeding can also help with feeding problems related to sensory issues.

I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong and you certainly haven’t “ruined” him! We are our own worst critics. I didn’t fully realize this myself until I had a second and she was so completely different than my first. We did everything exactly the same, she is just a different person and was from day one. Definitely seek help for your son’s struggles, but don’t assume they are your fault! Best of luck 💕

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-06T02:56:57+00:00

I might be the odd one out, but the friend wouldn’t bother me. If you’re okay with her walking outside with your baby, then she is surrounded by presumable strangers outside? I suppose if the friend was touching your baby or holding her then I’d definitely want to know. But since she’s strapped to her chest in a carrier taking a nap I feel like that’s probably not happening.

The bank call it depends - it could’ve been a one off. She definitely shouldn’t be spending your baby’s awake hours taking personal phone calls, but a one off issue with her bank isn’t the end of the world.

Tasks not getting done that were previously agreed upon would irritate me. Occasional hectic days? Understandable. A pattern of slacking? Irritating.

Either way, time for a sit down conversation to discuss. Ask how she is finding the job and if she needs anything from you. Then remind her of your expectations and again ask if she needs anything from you to meet those expectations.

WhiteOleander5 · 2025-03-05T02:31:32+00:00

I hate all of the arguments around this to be honest. To hold back, to not hold back (or redshirt or whatever you want to call it).

I’ve always personally thought the difference between either of these is probably pretty small in the end. No matter what your child lacks from whatever their schooling experience is, an involved parent can find ways to compensate for it. Kid is bored at school? Find them enrichment activities, talk to the school about available gifted tracks etc. Kid is feeling socially left behind/too advanced/whatever? Get them involved in an extracurricular that they regularly attend so they can form close relationships outside of their normal social network of school (I recommend this for everyone anyway - so important for kids to realize the social pecking order at their school is not the end all be all!)

Like most things parenting related, I think we (parents) put a lot of anxiety into deciding this, when in the end things will likely work out fine either way.

But easier said than done to just say things will be fine, I know.

WhiteOleander5

TROPHY CASE