Aibu for thinking the world doesn't stop if you work nights?

[Ilovepizzatoomuch]

I have never worked nights so I don't know if am I being unreasonable and not supportive but I am seriously struggling with DH's night working and constant using it as an excuse to get out of things.

For background, we have been together 10 years, two DC who are nearly 3 (twins). I work full time normal office hours and have recently taken over a management role, so a bit of adjusting on my part as well. Dh has always worked shifts, including nights, but for the last 18 months it had been every other week is night work.

When dh is on nights this is the typical pattern:
I get DC up, dressed and ready for childminder drop off. Can drop off any time from 730 and we are normally there at 730 so I can try and miss as much traffic as possible. However we wait for dh to get home (finishes at 630 but has around 35 - 40 min commute) this can mean we are late to the childminder and I get caught in more traffic but I think I it's important for dh to see DC in the morning. (Unless he is going to be really late then he will ring and let me know)

Generally, unless I am travelling for work or anything I will work from 0830 - 1730, then do a 30 mins drive back to pick DC up, usually arriving just before last pick up time as dh will still be in bed.

We get home, depending on how dh has slept, he will come down, say hello to me and DC and then go back to bed leaving us to have tea, do bath and bed. Dh will then get up around 9pm, shower and go to work.

In the meantime, there is washing that has to be done ( usually by me), dishwasher to empty (again me) food shops to sort (me) and pets to feed and clean (me)

As mentioned above I have just taken over a new role which is challenging but I am really enjoying but comes with more responsibilities. There are times when I need to stay later but due to dh not being able to pick DC up, I have to leave and quite often log in from home, which means working after all of the above is done and sometimes not logging off until gone 11pm, getting about 7 hours sleep at best (I don't sleep great when dh isn't in the house) and starting all over again.

When I have asked for more help when he is on nights all I get is that he is so tired and doesn't have the mental capacity for anything else. I survive on about 6 hours a night sleep but am expected to do all of the above.

But then I have never worked nights so not sure if it is unreasonable?

my dh does a mixture-when hes on nights he gets in around 730 ish and gets up at 2pm

no way does your dh need 14 hours sleep unless hes ill

Nights really don’t agree with me (I paid my dues, did 5 years of shift work and then moved out to a full time community role so only do the occasional on call shift now) but even I couldn’t sleep from 7.30am to 9pm! I used to get home between 8.30 and 9, eat some breakfast, then would usually sleep until 4.30/5pm and have a meal before leaving for my next night shift at about 6pm (with time to bung some washing on or do a bit of washing up before I left). Most of my colleagues were sleeping wayyy less than me! I totally understand kind of going into ‘survival’ mode and putting chores etc. To one side whilst you get through a run of crap shifts but it’s another thing to be in a fixed pattern of shifts where you are effectively useless for 50% of the time.

When I worked nights, I’d get home around 8.30 in time to see DS (aged 3) off to nursery at 9 with DH. So bed at around 9.30am. I’d have to be up at 1pm to collect DS from nursery at 1.30 and I was then awake for the rest of the day. When DH got home around 6pm we’d have dinner and I’d bath DS and sneak out for work around 7.30pm. Monstrous. I’ve no idea how I survived. I did end up divorced though and gave up night shifts altogether.

Your DH doesn’t need 12+ hours sleep daily.

I think the week off, week on really impact on everything.

Working consistent nights is one thing. Working nights for week, then days for a week is another.

He's working 10pm to 6:30am, with a 30-40 minute commute, is that right? So an 8 hour shift plus 30 minutes unpaid break.

His routine should be in bed by 10am ( his "evening" is 7am to 10am) and up by 6pm, not 9pm. If the childminder's last pick up time is 6pm it's not unreasonable for him to get up half an hour earlier two or three times per week, allowing you to work longer and giving him time with the children. Most adults need 7-8 hours sleep.

Certainly you should both be home and awake and participating in family life, childcare, bedtime and chores most da between 6:30pm and whenever he leaves for work - 9:30pm?

There are people in here who will do a 12 hour shift and get up at midday and say it’s easy etc. It depends on the job. My dh gives drugs which if wrong could kill people. So I believe night workers should get the eight hours sleep I get. However my dh also empties dishwasher puts the washing machine on and gets up in time for tea. Sleeping till 9 is not on.

I do work shifts though I'm allowed to sleep on nights (I usually put myself down for the 24 hours shift with 18 paid hours broken by a sleep in on call between 11pm and 5am which I realise it's not as hard as waking nights) and know that they're tiring, but why are some men socialised to believe shifts are a get out of jail free card while so many women fit their sleep in where it least impacts on time with the children?

I work nights. I can't sleep right after work. I finish at 7, have breakfast, wash-up and take the dog for short stroll. I'm in bed by 10am and frequently woken by cars, the postie, kids shouting, lawn mowers, dogs barking, the sun shining in my face through a crack in the curtains etc etc.

I get up at around 5pm feeling like death and leave for work again at 7:30pm unless I am on a double shift then I try to force myself to sleep straight after work and get up at 1:30pm to leave at 2:30pm. On those days I struggle to find the sink let alone wash a pot.

Sleeping during the day is hard even when you are on knees with exhaustion.

My husband sleeps from 8-3 when he was on nights then got up and pulls his weight. However he was always ill and tired.

When I have asked for more help when he is on nights all I get is that he is so tired and doesn't have the mental capacity for anything else. I survive on about 6 hours a night sleep but am expected to do all of the above.

does he actually step up when not on nights? Or is he still a selfish twat?

Asking as I have a friend who, in all the time I’ve know her, has worked nights. So, school drop off 8:45 and school pick up 3:10 add onto that her husband leaves the house at 7:30 so she has also got kids ready for school as well as dropping off, picked them up, made snack, prepped evening meal, dished up then eaten. Bathed kids then gone off for her night shift that she finishes between 5-7am. She comes home then (if time) has a nap and sorts the boys then goes to bed properly once they are in school (she has to walk too!)

I honestly don’t now how she does it but, as she says, it’s what needs to be done so she just gets on with it. Your husband is NOT pulling his weight. If you are doing it all on 6 hrs sleep then let him have only 6 hours then tell him to crack on!

If he can't sleep in the day he needs to find a different job though.

I can sleep in the day, but I agree not immediately after work (which the problem with sleeping at work where you are working up until the minute before you're officially on your 6 hours sleep). He's home just after 7am so should be in bed by 10 though, no different to getting home at 7pm and it not being unreasonable to be in bed by 10pm to get up at 6am.

If he can literally only work and sleep and op has to work the same number of hours, do all the childcare and all the housework, laundry and foodshopping and all of everything else involved in running a family, he is either ill or utterly unsuited to working nights and changing job needs to be absolutely top priority for him.

If he can't sleep in the day he needs to find a different job though.

Easier said than done.

OP hasn’t been back to explain why he finishes at 7.30am and sleeps until 9pm, that’s a hell of a lot of sleep!

He's taking the piss in my view. My own DH works nights sometimes but it's 7pm to 7am with a total of just under two hours commuting too.

He gets in at 7:40am, gets the kids ready for school for me, has a shower and goes to bed. He then gets up at around 3:30pm or earlier so he can come on the school run. Between getting up and leaving for work at 6pm he will do laundry, eat dinner, maybe do some sweeping or tidying or even just playing with the kids.

I used to work nights and found it horrendous. Then quality and the quantity of sleep I got did not correlate to the time in bed. Even if I got a decent amount of sleep I was still exhausted.

I never dropped dd off at school or picker her up but dh would take her to the childminder first thing and Cm would have her till 6pm. I think dh used to pick her up from the cm. I certainly wasn't doing housework.

Claw01 unemployment is at its lowest since 1975, under 4%. It shouldn't be hard to find a new job with a good employment record. Especially if he's a nurse or similar in demand profession.

I suppose it depends exactly what he's doing on his shifts. He should start looking anyway if he's so completely unsuited to shift work including nights that he's utterly and completely useless and leaving 100% of everything to his wife who works just as many hours and is having to survive on 6 hours sleep so he can have 14!

DH worked nights. He would get home around 7am and go straight to bed, getting up around 1pm or 2pm. He would pick DS up from school, sometimes prepare dinner for when I got home if I was going to be late, so all I had to do was heat it up but DS would have been fed. After his last shift, he would get up around 12pm so he could sleep that night, and would always do the shopping, sort out dinner and do the washing. The main downsides for us were he was really tired during his working week (12 hour shifts) so didn't really want to do a lot outside the house. Her never opted out of parenting or anything else, just worked around it.

DS has just started a new job and also works nights. Having seen his dad's example, he is following in his footsteps and not using it as an excuse for doing nothing - hopefully he will carry this on when he leaves home and finds a partner.

archive it’s tricky, depending on what he does. My DP for example was a self employed, sub contractor. You take what what you’re given! In fact he was ex, for a while, that’s how impossible it got!

The difficulty for us, was switching between days/nights, depending on what was offered. Horrendous.

However, he never needed 14 hours sleep . Typically home 5.30, up at 12.30. Leave for work at 9pm. Plenty of time to help out! Unless, he switched to days and vice versa.

My DP works night's he's home by 6.30am
we have breakfast together about 7.30am
he need's to wind down goes to bed around
9am, gets up around 5pm, we have dinner around 6.30pm, he might do a couple of thing's that need's doing leaves for work around 9.20pm, nobody needs 14 hrs in bed, it's time you had a talk with him, he's taking the piss

I agree with the general consensus that it sounds like he needs to demonstrate a little more balance between time spent in bed and contribution to the family. I worked nights for years (NHS Nurse, now no longer having to do shift work) and i’d usually get in about 9am, eat a snack and have a shower, go to bed about 9.30 and get up for 3/4ish, do some chores or whatever and make dinner. The trouble is that sleep is not particularly restorative during the day so I’d find sometimes it’d make no difference how much I tried to get to sleep, I just never felt refreshed. I also wonder if there’s any way of having a chat about his expectations from his daily routine when on nights? Surely he’s also bored? Sounds like there’s nothing aside from work and bed on those weeks.

As some one who sometimes does nights then l think he’s taking the piss. I admit that the quality of sleep you get on nights is poor. But 14 hours?! Let’s assume a typical adult needs 8-9 hours sleep, if he has 10.5 or 11 hours to compensate for the poor sleep. Then that’s 3 hours back to care for his children, do washing, cook dinner etc. Sounds like you are being run ragged

Thanks for all the replies.

To clarify a few points...

He is normally in bed by 730 - 8 to try and sleep. I know because I always message after I have dropped DC off and he usually says he is in bed

Some days are better than others. A good day he will sleep from 8 - 3, get up and have something to eat and then go back to bed.

Bad days can be anything from no sleep at all or very broken sleep.

We have invested in expensive black out blinds, he has a speaker pillow and I make sure the doorbell is off and nothing is being delivered during his week of nights.

I guess I have found this week harder to deal with as I have had 2 days of travelling which has in loved early starts and late home so dh has had to do drop off and pick up (and a family member had to stay overnight so in could leave at 330am both days) and all I got from dh was that I can never plan something like that again when he is on nights as it was so disruptive to his sleep and that I need to understand and plan round his work.

He should have been able to cope with that. He needs some serious sleep hygiene or giving up nights if he is coping so badly. I do nights and days so do understand. Avoid caffeine after 4am. Exercise after he gets home ( even a gentle walk). No screens or tv when he gets in. I do yoga nidra but that wouldn’t work for everyone. He could use white noise while he sleeps. If he really can’t get enough sleep in 10 hours then he needs to change roles. He should either be taking twins to childminder or picking up to make your life easier and spend some time with them .

I wonder if he’s in bed in the morning but pissing around on his phone

Depends what job he is doing. My DH runs a hospital department and his night shifts are absolutely horrible. He has a short two or three hour period in the day where he tries to get up so he can see me for a bit, but other than that he's asleep the whole time he's home. He switches between different shifts and it's so tiring for him. Everyone seems to be assuming that but OP's DH is sleeping right through when he's in bed - I very much doubt that. Most people can't just switch up their sleeping pattern on demand, so they end up being in bed all day but only sleeping properly for the odd hour here and there.

Your DH must be absolutely exhausted. I feel sorry for him. It's bad for his health long term to be doing these shifts. Is there way to change his routine at work?

It sounds like nights aren’t for him.