How much sympathy would you have for a colleague in this situation?

A bit of empathy for our fellow humans that are having a hard time doest go a miss.
Some hard hearted posters❤️👍

I feel like sympathy is the wrong word, maybe some grace. But I apply this to most people, you never know what’s going on in someone’s life. Unless it’s a regular pattern of screw up and mistakes which is different. They are meeting their targets and might be more forgetful and less energetic but I don’t think that’s an issue

I'm glad you are sympathetic, and I sympathise with your insomnia but having suffered insomnia for years too, sleepless children are something else, bc just as you might drop off, there's a yell for mummy. When they wake in their time, not yours, its mummy mummy, even if you are in the deepest sleep, your body gets into permanently ready to jump mode. And its something most of us have zero control over.

If you know someone having a tough time with this, offer to sit for an afternoon so they can sleep.

I would have lots of empathy OP, been there and done that.
No wonder the birth rate is dropping. Ideally women should -
Work hard to establish well paid and meaningful careers ( no relying on benefits).
Be child focused and put motherhood first. No preprepared foods or shortcuts around breastfeeding, diet, routines for babies, stimulating activities.

Look great , or at least not tired. Wear makeup and nice clothes. Don't be overweight, underweight etc.
At any point be prepared to care for older relatives. This is usually later than the baby stage , but can collide as women have babies later ( to make sure they have all the above wrapped up and under control ).
OP you sound like a great mum and colleague / employee. If I was there i would make you extra cups of tea and provide cake. Be proud of yourself xx

I would have a lot of sympathy. I have a 2 year old who is not a great sleeper- although we seem to be turning a corner 🤞 periods of illness are very taxing though!

I'm still good at my job but no longer consistently great- luckily my team are wonderful and supportive and don't hold that against me. I am told quite often by the wider team and general public that I look very tired. I just laugh.

Solidarity to you in your sleep deprivation and I hope it improves soon!

Poor woman.
Also she wont know about SEN if the baby is only a year. Terrible sleeper can be an early sign.

Also if she’s doing fine then there’s no issue. Im sure many men do ‘just fine’.

Until I experienced it myself, I thought I was reasonably sympathetic. I've worked mixed shifts for years and had tiring times in my personal life. However once I experienced this myself, and still am, it is horrific. So tired you can barely drive to work, never mind from work. You're brain can't properly function and the irritability factor is massive.

Relationships are tested, friendships dissolve. Its a total mess and I figure it happened to me bc I wasn't truly sympathetic in my previous life.

If you haven't experienced this relentlessly for years on end, you cannot imagine how f.awful it is.

I would display empathy and understanding because life isn’t all about work and it’s not all about you either. It’s really hard and I have been there.

I hope you are not driving if you are going 50 hrs with 2 hours sleep.

On a personal level, lots of sympathy. It's hard! That said, I do secretly dread a mat leave return because it's inevitably difficult to manage. It's hard on the rest of the team because all they see is constant additional leave and adjustments and it often builds resentment. I've heard it all, accusations of unfairness around reduced hours to "it wasn't like that in my day..." There's often more sympathy for someone on long term sick than there is around mat leave purely because it's seen as a life choice with foreseeable consequences that they have had a year to prepare for. I don't necessarily agree with that but that's my experience of how sympathetically it is perceived.

I'm returning from mat leave to my job as a police officer in counter terrorism and dreading it, hoping she sleeps better by then and would hate it if colleagues thought I couldn't cope.

Well like you say shes not dropped the ball and is doing fine, why is this even a question?

Total sympathy for your colleague

They would have a lot of my sympathy , I’ve been a single mum who2 kids before I know too well how it is to be running months on end on nothing but coffee and a need for a wage .

As someone with insomnia who runs on 2-4 hours a night I’d have every sympathy. All I think about is sleep.

An observation I'd like to make about this (as someone who returned from MAT leave when my daughter was 4 months old and sleeping terribly, and whose job did, at the time, sometimes involve life-and-death patient decisions)... In my experience anyway, even when you're exhausted, situations that involve this sort of intensity were actually mostly ok to deal with. Adrenaline would kick in and massively boost performance. Plus when you know you've got something important coming up, you load up on caffeine beforehand. But it was the times in between the crises - the admin time, the research time, the 'sitting and thinking and working out stuff without immediate pressure' time, when the quality of my work became markedly worse. So no, I'm not convinced that people with high-pressure, high-responsibility jobs are able to somehow just get on with sleep deprivation without struggling. They might be fuelled by adrenaline spikes and fear, and feel the nature of their job means they can't talk about when they're finding things difficult.

@Bloopbloopbleep To your original question as long as your manager is happy I wouldn’t worry what other people are thinking - most people are totally bound up in their own worries and insecurities to think to deeply about you.

And it is going to get better so this is a short term (relatively) issue.

Also ignore all the sleep trainer posters. Some kids are just not good sleepers for a while, and no technique or system will fix it. If you haven’t had a kid like this then you can’t understand it. But it will get better.

On the plus side you will probably find that your child is easier on other parts of child rearing.

So my DD didn’t sleep through the night regularly until she was five years - yes years - old.

However she was very easy going in regards to eating, trying new things, she was an easy international traveler from nine months old, happy to start in new environments etc without worries, loved school, could entertain herself by reading books from about six years old for ages.

I would have understanding and empathy. How could you not?

Prior to having children myself I watched colleagues be supportive to a new mum who was very sleep deprived. She got through it and a few years later became an excellent manager - they had faith in her and it paid off.
My own sleep deprivation was soul-destroying for me and tortuous at times, I felt very raw. I really appreciated similar kindness and similarly have gone on to progress. If we do away with sympathy in this situation we count a lot of women out of their careers (and we all lose out for it)

I would be fine with it as long as the colleague was meeting the requirements of the job which sounds like you are.

Id have less patience with excessive whinging about it, but doesn’t sound like you’re doing that either.

You can feel sympathetic but I would be peeved to take on more of a workload. Then there is the real issue of what they do when I was nursing being really ill or sleep deprived means a mistake that could kill someone.

I didn’t start feeling depressed until my baby was nine months old, after a few months of terrible sleep. I was fine when they were a newborn. I think some think only newborns are particularly awful sleepers.

My PND was caused by severe sleep deprivation so I’d have a lot of sympathy.

This!

Most colleagues annoy me for similar behaviour without that excuse. So they'd probably annoy me as much as the rest of them who can't manage to do the job properly and efficiently causing me to spend most mornings fixing the shit show from when I left the day before. So given how jaded I am in general I'd have zero sympathy I'd just complain about them the same way I complain about everyone else's incompetence. I view them all the same, we all have shit going on at home including myself. I don't sleep much more than 3 hours a night I'm constantly sleep deprived and feel awful but I still front up and do my job.
I clearly need a new job.