Is working nights really bad

[Foxes157]

I have an opportunity to work night shifts, it'll be a bit more money and a shorter working week.

Currently I have a short commute and although I start early, I'm home for when the kids get home.

I think of all the things I could do with the extra time. Is it worth considering?

I get ill an awful lot too - it’s battered my immune system.

It was great for giving me the flexibility I needed for my DCs at the time. I can fall asleep anywhere and everywhere so that part wasn't actually difficult but even so I was permanently exhausted, craved junk food and sweets, and put on about two stone.

I would say don't do it. I worked nights for about 7 years as part of a rotating roster and for me it was horrible. Feeling so tired you feel nauseous during the shift, near misses driving home, takes 2-3 days to recover, unsociable, healthy diet gone.

But - a friend of mine started night shifts last year, I told her not to do it. Begged her in fact! But to my surprise, she loves it. Suits her great. So everyone is different.

I just want to add that three night shifts a week takes up more time than three day shift. Eg, spend all of Monday at home but you have to go to work that evening, therefore you require a nap in the afternoon to prep and general you just live under the cloud of having to work that night. Tuesday you’re asleep all day and working again. Wednesday, another day lost to sleep and working again. Thursday, you’ve just finished nights so still sleep all day. Because you’ve slept all day, it’s harder to get to sleep that evening. So spend Friday not working but feeling like you’ve got a terrible hangover as you’re tired and essentially jet lagged. This often lasts Saturday too.... you’ll then have a good day Sunday.... and then start the pattern again!

As pp said, nights do actually take up more time for the same hours as days. I do 5 on 3 off and in reality it's two off - two full days where I've not been awake all night the night before or going to be awake all night that night. Christmas week I did two stints of staying awake for about 30 hours, because of needing to do stuff as well as work through the night, that was hard.
I am a night owl though, and I do sleep better in 2 goes rather than 1 long sleep. So I'll get home and sleep straight away for 4-5 hours, up an hour or so and eat and do anything I need to, then back to sleep for a 'nap' to see me through the night. I usually hit a wall around 5am (hence why I'm having a break now) and I eat then because it gives me the energy to finish my shift.
The main reason I do it is guaranteed hours, I'm in an industry where 0 hours contracts are standard, but night staff are always needed, and I need that stability of income. I am 40 and don't cope as well as I used to, but then working days 20 years ago and being out on the town 3/4 nights a week was easy then, I don't think I could do that now! I've had to do something about my diet because I'm constantly craving crap and I put a fair amount of weight on. My mental health is actually better because I'm not under constant pressure, I can pretty much stop when I need to, and I work alone which helps!
I love the feeling of getting into bed as everyone else is going to work, but the problem is that no one else thinks you need to sleep, and you get pestered a lot and I've even been told I'm lazy for sleeping past 1pm - they don't get the irony when I ask if they are lazy because they sleep past 1am 'because it's the middle of the night!'
Black out blinds and white noise works well in summer to help with peace to sleep.
I drink far too much caffeine and eat too much sugar because I need that rush to push through. People don't think that a night shift is that long because it doesn't seem that long to them because they're asleep.
On the whole I'm happy with doing them still, have been permanent nights for a few years now, but I can forsee a time when I won't be able to.

I have one 2yo and dont mind nights, I do 7-7 but it's not constant nights. I can drive home but I NEVER do nursery drop off as a rule, I closed my eyes in the car once in stop start traffic and never again. I'm awake by 3pm, pick up DS then we have a good 3 and a bit hours together. I can get him ready for nursery in the morning and then put him to bed at night. I see much more of him than when doing days.
If you are doing 2 or more nights back to back you must get kids out the house. I stayed with my MIL when DH was working away and she kept her grandchildren once a week. My sleep was so broken listening for him misbehaving or crying. So I do still pay for childcare. It is handy on the odd occasion he is unwell as I am at home anyway so he just sits in bed beside me with ipad.

We are usually mental at work until 12/1 then it calms down. Fairly acute service so generally kept going during the night and obviously if anyone is particularly unwell it can be a very quick night. If not then 2-4 is a bit of a slog.

One thing i liked about night shifts was, that i never had to set an alarm to wake up, i would let my body wake up naturally, was such a nice feeling, i dont do them anymore and my alarm is set for 0500 am, its fucking horrible

I did about 12 years of nights.

The pro's were no childcare costs, better pay, less work politics.

The cons were the horrific jet lag, impact on your career, lack of sleep, no social life, general ill health.

Wouldn't do it again.

I swapped to night shift once. I never got used to it, I couldn't sleep during the day, every noise was intensified and gave me the rage - barking dogs, lawnmowers, talking, cars.. felt like a zombie.

I was driving home one morning and realised I had slowed to 15mph in a 40. That was the decider. If you do it, make sure there's an option for you to go back onto days.

I've worked night shift for donkeys years through choice. I wouldn't work any other shift.
Fortunately I sleep fine during the day and my husband knows that unless it's a dire emergency then it's more than his life is worth to wake me before a certain time.
On my final night, when I go home I usually have a sleep for around 3 hours then go to bed at around 10 at night.
The important thing is routine and making sure that you get your sleep.
Unless you've worked nights then you will never understand how tiring it is.
One thing I always do is put my mobile on silent and leave it in my bag downstairs.
One thing that pissed me off is people phoning at around 1 in the afternoon and saying oh I thought you would be up by now. Why? Why the hell would I be up at what is effectively 1 in the morning??
As I demonstrated when I simply used to phone them at.....1 in the morning to prove my point, and trust me, they soon understood that point.
What people need to understand is that your morning is my evening, your daytime is my night time. Everything is reversed.

Realistically you won’t have extra time. I worked nights for 25 years. At first I used to do seven night shifts which was hell, more recently two nights at the end of a 6 on 4 off rotation. You are always tired for your first one because you haven’t had enough sleep. Then if you are lucky you will sleep well before the second one but I found that was rare. Then getting over it was really hard so although you had 4 days off the first one was walking around like a zombie after a couple of hours sleep waiting for it to be bed time.

I don’t do them anymore as I have gone part time and for health reasons. I actually really liked the actual shift, totally different atmosphere but I never liked the sleep and getting over them.

Think very carefully as you are likely to be permanently exhausted, people don’t seem to understand you will need to sleep in the day and see it as you having a day off, and the change in body clock plays hell with eating too.

Do you have children?
I worked nights for 2 years when youngest ds started school thinking it would be fine as I could sleep in the day.
I would work 10-6 when I came home I would have to stop up to do the school run then could come home and sleep 9:15-2:45 but would wake up a lot during this time to check the clock as used to worry I would be late to pick ds up from school.
I would then go back for a couple of hours after tea 6-8
It absolutely crushed me after a while, never getting a proper full sleep was crippling and I eventually swapped back to days

I did them for 5 years, permanent nights on a Mon - Thur basis.
I became exceptionally disciplined with my sleep and I know at times it pissed DH off as he genuinely couldn't understand why I was tired. On the last day I planned something unchangeable like the groceries being delivered which forced me out of bed after several hours. That way I got an early night later in the day and was almost back to normal timings.
When I gave up I told DH I would have a week off to get myself back together before doing agency work for a bit. In reality it took over six months to reset my sleep patterns - if you'd asked me at the time I would have sworn I was unaffected by working nights. I also realised quite how much I had hated it once I left, though part of that was undoubtedly the job rather than nights.

Hi OP
I worked shift work,nights,and it was my favourite shift of all.
The best way to cope was to not go to bed after work but to go mid to late afternoon then get up an hour or two before you start work.
The benefits are that you are keeping closer to your normal sleep pattern and you are more alert at work.
Plus on a freezing cold set Monday when everyone is heading off to work you are warm at home getting some chores done before a good afternoon/evening's sleep.
A red bull as I began work and I was good to go.

Where I work, I occasionally do nights but mostly days, and the shift pattern...isn’t much of a pattern. Because of that I find it really hard to go into night shift mode and then come back out of it for days again. All of my colleagues cope differently with it too, so there is no way to know if you can do it without trying.

I was a night owl in my uni days and early 20s and assumed I’d slot right back into it when I started occasional nights in my late 20s. What actually happens is that I’m conditioned to wake up early from working days for so long so I don’t get a lie in, struggle to nap in the day, and so by the end of night one I’ve been awake for 25-26 hours. I have no trouble falling sleep when I get in, but I’m not able to sleep for long enough. 4-5 hours is standard. My compressed week is a myth because I need the extra days to recover. It might be easier on permanent nights, but the people I know who do those then struggle to be back to their normal selves at the weekend and on holidays.

It’s a part of my job that I couldn’t avoid, but if I had a choice I wouldn’t be choosing to work nights.

I should have added in my earlier post, despite the negatives it was amazing for childcare so there's that to weigh up as well.
I imagine it would be murderous with young children, but when they're slightly older and just need shoving out the door for the bus (DS has done this since he was 6) it was perfectly doable.

treacherous I agree with your post where you say you need to have some form of activity to get up for. I arranged coffee with my dad last week so that it forced me to get up.

And yes to posters who have friends or family who think you are just “napping” after a night shift and that you don’t really need to sleep.

But I’ve always still used childcare as I need to go back to work as refreshed as I can be.

I work 2 12 hour night shifts a week Tuesday and Wednesday

My pattern is I get 3 hours sleep before the Tuesday shift then work all night
sleep 10 till 5 on Wednesday day then work all night
Sleep Thursday till 1 then get up so I sleep that night
I love it and I get to spend a lot more time with DS then if I worked 12 hour day shifts

I worked nights before I had children. I was young, fit and could sleep all day. I loved it, no big bosses around and it was much more relaxed than a day shift.

But, there's no way I could have done it with children. Maybe I should go back now they're grown.....

It does depend on how well you sleep etc. My dh did nights for years, all nights, 5-8 days on and 2 days off, it was very full on but 5 years later and he still wakes up in the middle of the night when his "lunch" break was on nights. He's tried all sorts to stop it but nothing has worked well.

I work mixed shifts but once a month always do a block of 4 consecutive 12 hour night shifts. They're my favourite shift to do. I nap for a few hours in the afternoon before my first shift then sleep 9-5 in between shifts. However I could sleep on a washing line so the catching up on sleep doesn't get to me too much. Often I have one day off then I'm back at 7.30am and my body can switch easy enough.

Working nights is not an 'opportunity'!

It's generally bad for your health and unless you're one of the lucky people who can sleep as well during the day as night you'll be in a fog much of the time you're off duty.

Important & senior people don't do night shifts, do they? Why should you, unless you really have to. I speak as a former night nurse - did it for years. Instead of sleeping properly during the day, if you can that is, you'll be up early loading the washing machine, waiting for deliveries, doing the school run, shopping, etc.

The world is geared around working during the day and sleeping at night for good reasons.

I get ill an awful lot too - it’s battered my immune system.

Everyone on my night shifts got sick more than day people. I felt ill a lot. I drank coffee, I'm a tea person normally. I ate shit because I wanted carbs and sugar all the time. I didn't work out because I was tired. I gained weight. And I felt like shit so much.

And long-term, evidence shows that turns into proper ill health. Cancer and heart disease.

My husband works back shift and it only works for us now as our youngest is 18. We both stick to the same pattern even when he is off work as the health impact of nights is worse if you swing in and out of days and nights. I have worked nights when the kids were little in the nhs and it was a killer trying to manage getting sleep and see the kids. I have a number of health issues now and am fairly sure the swinging in and out of night shift contributed to some of it. As a pp mentioned it is classed as a carcinogen and the advice is if you do it not to change the overall cycle more than once every six months.

I'm awake by 3pm, pick up DS then .....

This proves my point - very few people start their day at 3 in the morning and it would be a big deal and remarked on.