Laura's Story

Summary

Laura was working tirelessly on the Covid frontline during the pandemic. All whilst being a single mum of three teenagers...

She was in the hospital 6 days a week from 7am-8pm trying to find a clinical route through the virus. But her youngest was struggling and there was a battle of priorities for Laura.

After seeing much tragedy, she unfortunately developed PTSD. Since then, Laura has taken on a different role and shares that she learnt her biggest lessons in her hardest times.

Her advice to other single parents is:

• Be kind to yourself because there’s no such thing as a perfect parent and kids’ needs and requirements change week by week. So, as soon as you think you've nailed it, it changes again. It's about having flexibility.
• I think it’s important to tell your employer your story, it's powerful.
• Take yourself to work. Rather than try to be this other person who isn't a mum. We need to be more human.
• Everybody’s got their own way of parenting. Honesty and transparency works for me and builds trust. My children know that if something goes wrong, they can ring me.

Read Laura’s full story below, where she bravely shares the true impact this time had on her and her family. 

 Laura's Story 

I'm a single mother of three kids. I was married for 10 years and have been on my own now for about the same. My children are 19, 17 and 14 and are best friends, which results in a happy home full of laughter. My relationship with their father has had its ups and downs over the years but he is a great dad and co-parenting works well for us on the whole. 

My eldest moved in with me full-time near the beginning of the pandemic. She’d had enough of going back and forth between her parents and wanted a single base. The boys spend a week with their dad and then a week with me, although there is flexibility around this arrangement. We've tried a number of different routines over the years adapting as the kids’ needs have changed. 

The children’s father and I both work for the NHS, myself as a nurse for many years, moving to Innovation more recently. Their father is a doctor which has been helpful when communicating the busy, stressful times and balancing the family needs.

I did some part-time work after I had the first two, working on Cardiac ICU but I didn’t settle well there. I felt I needed to be full-time in this acute area in order to feel confident and competent. 

By the time I had three children, a part-time nurse's salary was paying for the childcare, so I decided to stay home. 

I let my Nursing registration lapse during this time. When my marriage ended, I suddenly thought, ‘Shit, what am I going to do?’ I was missing my work. I missed the mental stimulation of caring for people and the camaraderie that comes with working within a team.

I did my ‘return to practice’ and then took a couple of years to find my feet. I worked in a dialysis unit, and I tried other positions, but none of them ignited me.

I applied for a job in Research Nursing, which was Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. I was learning something new. It was constantly changing and evolving. I'd finally found my niche and worked in this area for seven years.  

The kids were aged around 10, 8 and 4 at the time. It was challenging. I had a very good friend, Jody, who would pick the kids up from school, cook dinner and stay with them until I got home.  

I was very aware of how vulnerable my kids were emotionally at that time because they were going through their parent’s separation. Jody is a friend to us both. It was important to me that there was that support, which wasn't judgmental on either side. Jody loves my children. As does his wife. We were lucky to have such good friends who our children felt safe with.  

During the pandemic, I worked as a Senior Research Nurse, setting up and managing the clinical trials Delivery Team. 

I was in a hospital six days a week from 7am-8pm. It felt like I was barely home, but the drive to assist with finding a clinical route through the virus was compelling. 

Due to the time I was in work, I wasn’t able to do homeschooling with the children. I knew the older two would be fine. But I also knew that my youngest was struggling. He was 11 and the older two would support him, look after him, but in terms of education, I couldn’t help because I just wasn’t home enough.

There was a battle in my head about what my priorities were. 

It surprised me that work came first when usually being a mum would come first. But the enormity of what was going on in the hospital changed that. 

I felt I needed to be there. 

I needed to be helping the world find solutions to this disease. Perhaps that’s over egging it and my ego talking but I felt I had a big responsibility to my team, the clinicians and the patients to make sure I was on top of my game. I felt I wasn't there for my children enough, we talked about it a lot and they were, and still are, incredibly supportive. They kept telling me they were fine. I’m so lucky that they’re bright and self-driven. They’re self-sufficient and safe. I trust them. That didn’t stop me feeling guilty.

I appreciate we had the privilege of being middle class in a pandemic. We have a nice house with a garden. The children were in a nice environment if nothing else.

During that period, I would get up at 5am and check Twitter, which allowed me to touch base with international research. I knew that when we turned up on the ward, the doctors and nurses would be looking to us to explain what was happening. I would always be the first in the office every day to check my team was okay and hold a briefing for the day. There were always deaths overnight. I would also be last out in order to check in with the team individually before they returned to their families.

We all worried about taking Covid back home with us and many of the staff had children, or a parent who was unwell. If there was nobody to cover, I would come in on my days off and if there was more stuff to do, I'd come in at the weekend. 

I knew it wasn't sustainable and everybody kept saying so but I didn't expect the pandemic to go on for so long. We had a little respite in between the first and second wave but then the second wave was much worse for us. Everybody was flagging and I started to give myself permission to take my foot off the pedal because I’d been working at this capacity for 18 months. I knew I was heading towards burnout. 

The day we found out Dexamethasone worked, I cried. 

It was probably the best day of my career. We had proof it worked and we had been saving lives by trialling it. It was immense because it had been such an intense time with so many deaths and tears. I was so proud of our team.

The job was so much more than looking after patients. It was trying to counsel their families as well. We often did video calls with patients and families because patients were so breathless they sometimes couldn’t speak.

I wanted people to be involved in decisions around their health. Some patients didn't have enough oxygen to the brain so their next of kin would make the decisions. A lot of the work was following patient journeys. Some of them did well but so many in that second wave didn't. I left one Saturday lunchtime to return on a Monday morning and 20 of our patients had died.  

I mean how do you deal with that? I didn't deal with it. I just went on to the next thing, running on adrenaline and in a sort of fight/flight mode. I was probably in denial and that’s perhaps why I'm now dealing with PTSD. My family knew things were tough at work but that was as much as I needed them to know.

I think being a single parent was significant and the lockdown amplified the challenges. 

I didn’t have a partner to come home to and say, ‘Christ, that was a shit day.’ Although two of my best friends became my bubble, I didn't use them enough. In retrospect, I should have spent more time with them and shared my experiences. I was also conscious I was with Covid patients every day. I kept myself away from all my friends because I knew I was high risk. I was isolated. I should have looked after myself better but the reality is, I’m not sure how I could have done that. 

It was a survival situation. 

It wasn’t a normal everyday scenario. 

And it wasn’t all negative. I did enjoy the adrenaline and that sense of being able to create positive change and find solutions. It was exciting the way the hospital came together and collaborated. 

I've kept little notes that my children wrote to me saying how proud they were of me.

I realised I might be experiencing PTSD when I started avoiding going to see patients. I'm very patient-centred, and I've always said that if I'm not enjoying work and giving my all, I need to think about doing something different. 

I also work in refugee camps in Northern France. I went out there to give humanitarian aid and I felt nothing. 

My spark had gone. 

It’s usually a very emotive experience. But during the first trip back after the pandemic in February 2022, I didn't feel anything, I was numb. I knew something wasn’t right and wondered if I was burnt out. 

A job in Innovation came up and I realised it was right for me. It’s at a more strategic, rather than patient, level and I think that's where I need to be right now. It’s where I'm able to contribute something positive but also look after myself a bit more. 

I realised I had experienced trauma when I was threatened with redeployment back to the Covid wards during the third wave. I started having flashbacks and couldn't sleep. Together with the numbness and nightmares, I realised it was more than stress. I had about 10 counselling sessions, which I found really useful. 

PTSD is a bit like a box that's full of all these images and memories and every now and then the lid just comes off. 

But you don't know when it's going to happen. It happened to me on a leadership training course. I couldn't get my breath and my knees went from under me and I couldn't stop crying. Fortunately, I was with some army instructors who had experience of trauma and were able to provide the correct support. That’s when it was named as PTSD and I started to get more specific help. 

I’ve been open with my children about it because I want them to continue to talk and be open with me as they grow up. I'm quite transparent with my kids in a protected way. I want to give them tools to be able to support themselves. Not by sharing my trauma with them but by making sure they've got the tools to navigate their own challenges.

Because our relationships are good and because we communicate with each other, it's easier. I think all three of them know how to access me. I'm always open to them and always present, and actually, being a single parent allows me to be more present because I get a break. I can focus on me when they’re with their dad and then I can be completely present for them when they’re with me.  

I think you need to let children fail sometimes (with support). I let them struggle at times because that's how people grow. That's how we develop and learn. We have a tendency to look at failing as something awful, quite the contrary I have learnt my biggest lessons in my hardest times.

There are so many different ways of parenting and none of them are right or wrong. But this works for me.

My advice to other single parents is be kind to yourself. 

There's no such thing as a perfect parent and kids’ needs and requirements change week by week. So, as soon as you think you've nailed it, it changes again. It's about having flexibility. 

I think it’s important to tell your employer your story, it's powerful. 

My bosses have known I'm a single mum of three but that doesn't stop me doing anything. I do refugee work, I volunteer, my life is full, so I have time to do it all, but I need to do it in my time. 

I think the higher you climb, the easier it gets. 

I’m very passionate as a leader. I want to make sure that these leadership values are filtered down in the NHS.

I've been very honest about who I am, the way I work and how my employer will get everything out of me because that's the sort of person I am. But it's okay for me to take Friday afternoon off because I've got the kids. I’ll do a couple of hours on Saturday morning when they're with their dad. 

I will meet my deadlines as long as I have that flexibility. 

Take yourself to work. 

Rather than try to be this other person who isn't a mum. Be you at work so that people know that there's stuff going on, so it doesn't come as a surprise. I think it’s important that we're more authentic about who we are as people, not just as employees. We need to be more human.

It's a trust thing as well. It's about management trusting their staff to deliver on their terms to make it work within their own lives. I wonder if that's improving because people have been working more from home or maybe old habits of control will gradually slide back in.

Everybody’s allowed to have a bad day. Some people say don't bring it to work but for me, that's bollocks. How can you put something bad that's happened in a box and take it home at night? It's just not realistic. 

Otherwise it becomes a bit of a performance and then that's when you don't connect properly, you don't understand people. And that's when judgments start because nobody understands the reason for the behaviour. I saw a meme on social media about how we have feelings and this leads to a behaviour, but beneath that is a need and actually that’s what we need to look at. What is the need?

I don’t want to judge. This is particularly important when parenting teenagers, I think people struggle with teenagers because they're doing the things that we used to do. They're going out, drinking, starting to have sex. They might be trying drugs. It's very easy to say, ‘You mustn't do that, it’s bad for you.' I don't do that. I'm just like, ‘Okay, just tell me what you are doing and when you're going to do it. I'll make sure I'm around.’ 

Everybody’s got their own way of parenting. Honesty and transparency works for me and builds trust. My children know that if something goes wrong, they can ring me. They're not going to think ‘Mum’s going to kill me, I can't tell her.’ They know that I will pick them up, look after them and then we will talk about it! It gives them that space to grow and experiment (which is natural), and as a parent it's so reassuring to know that they'll ring if they need me. 

I try (!) not to judge, to be transparent and open as a family. It’s not an encouragement to behave badly in any respect, but I'm not going to pretend, I don't know what's going on.

My children are my world and I learn from them every day. Being a mother has undoubtedly brought me the biggest joys of my life. It’s an honour every day to be part of their journeys, to watch them grow and develop, to balance their needs with my own and pass on tools to enable them to reach their goals. 

The pandemic took me away physically for a while but I am incredibly proud of the way the children pulled together to support themselves and me during this period.