to feel annoyance when my childless colleagues keep saying how tired they are?

[sandyballs]

They don't know the meaning of the word

I'm experiencing this with my best friend at the moment.

SHe works full time in a nursery (As do I), she goes to universtiy full time (as do I), she lives at home, has everything done for her, spends all her money on clothes and then moans at the end of the week that she's dead tired.

Now I'm sorry, I agree that full time work and uni is stressful at the best of times, but unlike her, I run my own home, do everything for my family, and run around DH and DD as well as uni and work.

Gets on my feckin nerves tbh

Absolutley Lazy Lou!

I also have a friend who has a DD. She make her have a nap in the afternoon because she needs one!

Once, I looked after her DD what should have been a morning as her DH was helping my DH. She was going to work (she works a couple of hours on a sunday morning). She was supposed to come a pick her DD up at 12.30. My DH and hers went back to hers to drop some stuff off, and guess what? She was upstairs in bed!

She has left her DD with me, not rung me, and went home to bed. By the time her DH had finished helping mine it was 7pm. She was all bathed, fed and ready for bed!

I'm not wonder woman, but bloody hell!!

When I had DS1 I rang a couple of friends and apologised for not understanding how tired they were and not helping them more. I do think it is a right of passage thing, and now I look back on the days when it was just me and him and wonder why I complained so much when i had plenty of opportunity to sleep in the day when he slept, unlike now, pg with no 3 and no chance to catch up on broken nights at all, or fratricide would certainly take place. However, I do remember when I was working and commuting sometimes being so tired when I got in I couldn't move off the sofa - wouldn't swap those dark evenings of driving through rush hour for anything now.

my sister is childless but I feel sorry for her when she says she is tired. Up until a year ago she was working too jobs, she now just works one but works very long hours, including late nights and weekends, and she gets up in the middle of the night to pick her dh up from work.

I have a 16 month old daughter who used to sleep but now doesn't , I work a full time job and I go to college two nights a week, studying another two evenings. So unless they have circumstances like my sister, I get peeved when people say they're tired!

I won't comment for fear of being shot to flames...As a live-in Nanny (therefore childless myself) I feel I should point out that we are often woken in the middle of the night (I actually hear my charge before her parents as I sleep next door!) & I never get to sleep later than 7am unless I go away for the weekend...I also suffer with insomnia...But hey I chose to be a live-in didn't I!...I'll probably be less tired when I have children!

I don't think you really count scottishthistle! You look after the children 24/7!

totally agree with booboobeedoo... there's more than a faint whiff of martyrdom on this thread. we're lucky to be parents, it's a bloody dream come true in my case, and if that means a bit of sleep deprivation then so be it. i wouldn't have the alternative.

I think you are being a bit unreasonable but you know this don;t you, sandy? You arwe grinning.

Everyone has the right to feel very tired if they feel very tired.

Of course they have a right to be tired (non-parents I mean) as long as they don't mind people tutting at them and witholding sympathy. I am so tired these days I'vee completely forgotten what it feels like not to be ....so there!

I just wonder why people with kids just don't go to when they're tired. What's stopping them? WHen I get home from work I fantasise about going to sleep...but if I did three LOs would probably jump up and down on me.....

There should be a moaning room in every workplace where you can go and complain to a trained counsellor about how tired you are and receive sympathy, tea and cake, no matter what the cause.
There should be one of these in every town hall and community centre for those whose workplace is their own home.
Everyone should be entitled to a good old moan without guilt.

In a former life i was a junior DR working a 70 hour week (some of that at night), trying to see my family/freinds in my time off as well as shopping/cooking/eating. I have never been so tired, everyone i met always said i lloked tired for 6 months. Having 2 small children (DS 2.10, DD 4 months) is a walk in the park -sorry You lot have no idea of tiredness- now is that a useful attitude ? i actually think people have very different needs for sleep/ rest so whatever anyone is feeling is valid

pmsl naughtymummy. 'you lot have no idea what tiredness is'... you go girl.

A slightly different spin on naughtymummy's comments - I was in the army before I had mine, and part fo my job was a lot of broken nights on duty and then working the next day, which although I didn't enjoy, I thought was good preparation for motherhood - how wrong I was! When I was on duty I usually knew I had 3 hours uninterrupted sleep between jobs - it took me AGES to get used to the fact that when you shut your eyes as a mother you never know how quickly you will be up again.....

Also, what hasn't been factored in here is the length of time that sleep is interupted for, in a completely random way. Or the length of time you are dealing with draining toddlers and infants and getting poor quality sleep. Anyone can or should be able to cope with chronic fatigue if it isn't going to go on seemingly without an end in sight. I think the time frame is crucial here.

yeas, I used to feel v despondant at the fact that no one could tell me when the sheer pain of crap sleep was going to end... it seemed to loom on for eternity! Then I used to want to slap the complacent mummies who said ' my child has slept through since 2 minutes old, but last night I was up all night. It's much harder forme, you see, becuase you're USED to being up all night....

despondent, though, is different from actual annoyance, which is what the OP feels when faced with a childless (lord knows the circumstances) with a hangover. can't get my head round that...

Whoever asked 'why don't childless people sleep when they get the chance?'.

Well, when I was childless and single it was because I was lonely! I was craving company, and going out was the way to get it. Got much less tired after marrying DH and staying in more (having met him on a week-night in a pub - shame on me).

Now, of course I'm 37 weeks pregnant and getting about 2-3 hours sleep a night. Yeuch.

lol naughtymummy. (I know who you are btw - ).

Can I just point out that NONE of you knows what tired really is

I had glandular fever with a baby
Now THAT is tired

I have to say that I don't mind anyone moaning about being tired regardless of their parental status, but what I do hate is the constant stream of crap that comes out of peoples mouths when trying to explain why they haven't met a deadline.

If I can manage to write the 2000 word esay in 2 weeks then you who lives at home has mummy do everything for you (inclusing run a bath for her when she gets in from college) can bloody well manage to write it.

Also fully grown women who have had kids but they don't live at home anymore who come up with the most stupid excuses I have ever ever heard of in my whole life. Do the bloody work or get of the f'ing course.

Oh I forgot to say that I canm never moan to my Mum about being tired because she will just remind me that she managed to bring up 7 children and started Uni when the youngest was only a few weeks old. So please shut up because you are starting to sound like my mother

Also you don't have a clue how tired anyone else feels, or how ill anyone else is (unless it's man flu, that doesn't count). You only know how you feel, have felt.

I would just smile and know that they will learn what true tiredness is in due course- if they are lucky

they have no idea.

It must be like watching someone walking under a ladder with a tin of paint poised at teh top, about to fall on their heads. YOu know it's going to happen at some stage but there's no point warning them - they won't believe you anyway and they'll find out themselves

But that's so patronising xoxo.

Of course a childless woman won't know how tired she'll be, but even if there was any way for her to 'know', it wouldn't kill the very strong urge to procreate that most of us have.

Pure bloody pre-event Schadenfreude on this thread from a lot of you, I'm afraid.

when my ds(13) was a baby and i worked part time every day i complained to my mil that i was tired. she said i didn't know the meaning of the word. so i guess nobody has the right to judge how tired anyone is, if you're tired you just are!

what about DHs who can sleep through the loudest of wailing children oblivious to kicks in the back and then complain they are tired when you've been up half the night? Or, like my DH , who slept through 3/4 of my first labour (during which snooze a firealarm went off I exagerate not for an hour!) and then told me afterwards he was tired!!! They seem to have got off lightly on this thread......