Mothers In Medicine Podcast · Mothers In Medicine

The impact of surgical training on pregnancy and parenthood : Dr Sarah Howles

·33 min·2 clips

Pregnancy loss was about 30% overall and 35% in the under-35 group.

Dr Shola opens the episode with a conversation about motherhood and medicine. She welcomes Dr Sarah Howes to talk about pregnancy, parenthood, and surgical training, framing the discussion on International Women's Day and the stark gap between the number of women on the GMC register and the low representation of women in surgical specialties. The study findings hit hard. Sarah explains that about half of people who tried to have a child during surgical training delayed parenthood because they were in training, around a quarter needed infertility investigations, and 80 percent later regretted the decision. That becomes the emotional core. The conversation keeps returning to the fact that doctors often try to fit family planning around career milestones, even though pregnancy does not follow the logic of exams, research deadlines, or rotation dates. Support matters here. Sarah describes how much easier it is when senior colleagues have been through pregnancy themselves, because they can speak up, adjust schedules, and help make changes to working practice feel normal rather than awkward. The tone stays practical. Rather than leaning into outrage, the episode keeps asking what actually helps, how workplaces can respond, and why the burden should not sit only with the pregnant trainee to explain everything from scratch. There is also a wider shift. Sarah points to changing childcare patterns, the growing normality of fathers taking time off to care for their children, and the sense that more people now understand how hard the juggle can be. She speaks personally too. She says she once imagined research would be the ideal time to have children, but learned that pregnancy cannot be planned with the same control many doctors expect from training and work. Pressure shows up plainly. The discussion names the impulse to wait until exams are over or the timing feels perfect, while also acknowledging that the juggle remains hard whenever it happens and that people have to decide what is right for them. The ending widens the frame. The episode closes by noting that, since recording, the British Association of Urological Surgeons has released a September 2025 guide supporting urologists who are becoming parents, including pregnancy, parental leave, and childbirth. That gives the talk a useful afterlife. Mothers in Medicine finishes with the same quiet steadiness it began with, inviting listeners to keep following the series and to bring future topics to the show.

As heard by us

A calm look at how surgical training can turn family planning into a professional stress test.

The episode treats pregnancy in surgical training as a workplace problem, a family problem, and a career problem all at once. Dr Sarah Howes and Dr Shola talk through the pressure to delay parenthood, the strain of planning around exams, and the possibility that some trainees…

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Why you'd press play

You want an honest look at pregnancy and parenthood in surgical training, without the polished version.

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