The experiences of a researcher undertaking a qualitative study exploring mothers’ experiences of caring for children with complex needs are used to illustrate the practical and professional issues that can arise in such studies. These children require significant technical care for airway management, feeding, seizure management and personal care in the home. Given the pressures on their time, collecting data from the mothers in the home setting took at least twice as long as planned and required significant travel and time. Care needs of the children and presence of siblings resulted in frequent disruptions to interviews and affected the quality of the data collected. Professional issues such as the mixed role of researcher and nurse and how to manage situations that gave cause for concern also needed to be considered. Researchers undertaking such studies should be prepared for the complex issues that can arise when undertaking interviews with mothers in the home situation.