To hate DHs drama llama behaviour when he’s on nights

[Reallytired17]

Constant ROARING yawns, like ‘YYYYYIIIIIEEEEEEEAAAAWWWWWWWWNNNNNN’

Then, ‘oh, SORRY, I’m on nights.’

The rest of the week he will do nothing coz ‘I’m on nights.’

It’s driving me mad.

user149etc of course there are other shifts. But you can’t get day shifts all the time, usually everyone has to take their turn of the earlies, lates and nights. So you can well end up working nights on and off over a 30y career.

I don’t work nights - I work 24h shifts once a week with the occasional 24h Friday followed by a 24h Sunday. It’s not uncommon to be working for 20 of those 24h (& it’s just me on - no juniors or registrars - covering maternity, ICU, emergency surgery and ED). I still load the dishwasher and cook during my 24h Saturday in the middle (to be fair I don’t do anything during my call shift but that’s because I’m not at home to do it). I used to work weeks of nights, 72h weekends (although as part of a larger team), 14h night shifts plus handover round the next morning - I still did the dishes, cooked, laundry etc when I got home before I went to bed.

Yes OPs dh is tired. Big deal. If I behaved like he is when I’m working 24h shifts plus the next day I’d drive my dh insane. OP, your dh needs to get on with it and stop with the dramatics before you lose all respect for him.

Might not suit everyone but it helps.......
When your shift finishes,stay up and do some chores,go to the gym,whatever,then go to bed several hours before work getting up with enough time to get ready as you would on a day shift then off to work.
The advantages of this are that you are more awake on shift and when you go onto rest days or day shifts your sleeping pattern is not polar opposite as you have been sleeping late afternoon and early evening..
It takes some doing at first but I found it really helped.

it depends, is he only on nights sometimes? When I was working nights it used to take me a few nights to get into routine after any time off, so if his patterns change regularly he probably doesn't have time to get used to it. so the being tired and not doing much I can understand but loud yawning is annoying whatever the reason, yawning is fine but people that make loads of noise about it really wind me up.

I couldnt stay on my job if I stopped doing nights and I like my job! I just hate the 2/3 days after nights. I hate feeling like an outsider to family life when Im on nights and "life goes on". But I dont want to go work in the kinda areas that are days only, the actual work in day only jobs Im qualified for are really not my thing.

It would also be a pay cut

Yes nights really are that bad
But if you otherwise like your job??

Karma, depends how long your shift is doesn’t it? In medicine and nursing (which seems to be most of us doing nights on this thread), nights are 12-14 hours so by the time you get home, it’s time to go to bed if you want a decent sleep before your next shift.

I do know people who used to manage on about two hours’ sleep in the afternoon. Unsurprisingly they found nights really fucking hard

So my routine used to be: finish work at 9:30, home by 10:30, brush teeth and into bed by 11. Sleep until 18:00, shower and food, and leave by 19:00 to get to work by 20:00.

Obviously if you start work later you can sleep in longer. I also used to find that a quick 20min catnap at about 4am made a massive difference to how awake I was at 8am. That does depend on being able to take your breaks though, and in gen med there is no fucking way.

YANBU. He should come in, have breakfast, go to bed for 8 hours, I know it's not the same as working days, but it helps.

I hate hate hate nights. It takes me forever to get over them, I'm a massive drama queen over the whole thing and my body gets so messed up that I can't sleep when I'm tired. I feel truly sorry for my dh, but he is so lovely when I do them because it's his worst nightmare that it almost makes it worth the awfulness that is unpaid night shifts

I think what pisses me off about night shifts is they ARE awful and they do have a hideous impact on your health and wellbeing. But my husband does one night shift a week, sleeps most of the day before and after (prep/recovery), and then uses this as an excuse for being a grumpy useless shit bag at all other times....

I on the other hand work a mere 60 hours a week (day shifts, but at this time of the year leaving and arriving home in the dark), and am expected to be a vision of calm because how could I begin to comprehend how fucking exhausted he is.

My DH has worked shifts his entire working life. Currently he does 2 or 3 nights in a row and drives an hour to and from work on top of the 12 he shift I don't have a clue how he copes on so little sleep tbh. I worry about reports that shift working shortens your life though 🙈

When I am actually on nights I do not one thing around the house or with the children unless I feel up to it but am only awake in the house for the time needed to eat and wash anyway due to long shift plus 1hrx2 journey time. If dh wasn’t as understanding as he is it would be even more awful than it is and unsafe for my patients. The day after I do power through after a couple of hours nap though so try very hard not to prolong the agony!

I have colleagues who cope better and do more, but lots who are the same as me.

I used to work nights ages ago. If anything my wife moaned more about getting up for work in the morning when I was going to bed after my night shift!
I worked Mon night to Thursday night. I used to set the alarm to get up at a normal time on Saturday but I could never do it.

Jesus wept, someone just equated putting one's dirty dishes in the dishwasher to 'doing housework at 3/4 am'.