Night shift - how much sleep after

[Bazinga1988]

So I am probably being unreasonable as I have never worked nights and have always worked standard office hours etc. Dh however is a shift worker, always has been but recently seems to need more and more sleep after a night shift!

We have 1 dc(5) who is currently being home schooled, and I am 19 weeks pregnant. I am working full time from home in a pretty full on office role.

Dh is on nights this week. He works a variety of shifts, including earlies, lates and nights, but predominantly nights.

Last night he started work at 10 (left home at 930pm) and was home by 4am. In bed by 5am.

He has so far slept from 5 - 1030, 11-1230 when he got up for lunch, and then went back to bed at 2pm and is still there.

I have worked, supervised dc while doing home school (which involves logging in to 5 lessons via Google classroom and trying to listen to what's going on), worked all day, although I need to log on later as I'm definitely falling behind on work. Made breakfast, lunch and dinner for me and dc, emptied the dishwasher, sorted a load of washing and just sorted the home shop we have had delivered.

Am I being unreasonable to think dh should have got up and helped out a bit for the afternoon at least, and then gone back to bed later if needed? He's unlikely to get out of bed before 9 so I will do the bedtime routine on my own as well.

Should also mention that yesterday he was in bed all day, got up about midday to do himself some lunch, then reappeared again about 8 to do himself some dinner.

I don't know if I am asking or expecting too much but I feel really stressed and on edge today!

If I got home at 5am after working 6hrs I'd be up at 12 at latest. No need for him to be in bed till 9pm.

I do nights, I leave at 18:10, am back home by 9:30 am. I sleep 10:30 am till 4pm

He's taking the piss. He should have a 6-7 hour stretch of rest then help out.

I think I can give you a fair opinion OP. I did nights since DS was a baby and nights is tough I agree with posters.

However you can’t sleep the day away when you have kids. I often had to see to DS and go to work from 7pm till 7.30am.

I think maybe he can help in the mornings for a bit then go to bed or either get up earlier.

Otherwise how will you go on with the new arrival comes along OP.

I did nights. Home by 7.45am and slept 9.30 - 5 but was working 12hrs nights

On that shift I would sleep 5am - 12 probably

I work 10pm-6am. Sleep at 7am-1:30pm then back to bed at 6pm-9pm. Being a night shift worker messes you up. Especially if he's on all sorts of different shifts. I would suggest he sleeps, 5am-12pm. Then up until a nap in the evening 6-9? Before he heads to work again

Based on those hours he's looking at a 14 hour sleep !!! Even if some of it isn't solid that's a lot of sleep and rest after only 6 hours work! He's taking the piss.

I do 12 hour nights. Sleep 8.30 ish to 1630 if on the nice night or 8.30 -13.30 if finished. But it's not the same sleep. I don't wake up feeling refreshed at all.

I think 8 hours sleep total should be enough.

I do 12 1/2 hour night shifts, I'm lucky if i get 5 hours.

Surely you get up with DC and make noise between 6-8? He's then awake at 10.30 and awake again at lunch. He is getting 7 hours of broken sleep which is worse.

He should shift and stay awake if he can, have something to eat and do until 8am with DC and then go to bed and not be disturbed at all until 4 o'clock.

Rotating shifts are horrendous. You are permanently exhausted.

I'm not sure that the posters scoffing at his short shift are right really. Regardless of the length of his shift, he is awake when he 'should' be asleep and that is hard on the body. So to say he should be up at 12pm isn't realistic. That said, I think he's being ridiculous too, he can't sleep all day.

I think the suggestion that he tries staying up for a bit so that the household is up and dressed and settled downstairs before he goes to bed is a good one. Better quality sleep will really help. Might not be brilliant for him in the height of summer but in my experience you're buggered on shift work when the daylight hours are so long whatever you do.

So, he spends from 5am to 8-9pm in bed apart from getting up a couple of times to eat.

He needs that much rest to work 5.5 hours?
(I am including the statutory 30 mins break for 6 hours work in that)

What the hell is medically wrong with him.

Sleep after a nightshift isn't a true and restful sleep. It's hard to come home, switch off and go straight to sleep you wouldn't go straight to bed after a 9-5 job Then when you do get to sleep other people are just getting up, it's light outside and general life noise is going on. Rotating shifts are notoriously bad for your health too.
If you've not worked shifts it's hard to understand just how tiring it is however, you have children. He needs to accept that he cannot go to bed and just sleep on and off all day. He should definitely be helping round the house, with childcare and general life in the house but he also needs to sleep.

Only you and he can come up with a way to resolve this, you need to sit down and come up with an agreement that works for both of you and it will need compromise from both of you.

I've worked full rotating shifts for 17 years and nights are still a struggle. I get by on 4 hours sleep which is less than ideal.

Is he going straight to sleep as soon as he gets in? It used to take me at least an hour to switch off from work, shower, eat etc.
Seems like a lot of sleep for 6 hours work.

My DP does 10-7 so through the night. Comes home stays awake till 2 as he will have to have DD then when I go back to work then we have dinner and then goes to bed until 9 so roughly 6/7 hours but we do disturb him. It’s not easy doing nights but you have to work with it and each other

I work 19.30- 08.30, home by 09.30, in bed by 10.30, get up 17.00, sometimes that's solid sleep, mostly its broken, sleep- I'm fit for nothing on the days I work, and after the last shift I try to get up at noon, mooch about for the afternoon/evening, and ready for bed by 21.00

However, I dont have kids- if I did, I'd expect to sleep a lot less, and from what my colleagues (who have 1-5 yr olds at home ) say, I'd expect a couple of 3 hr blocks sleeps through the day if I was lucky!

I don’t know if you’ve looked at any of the research into working night shifts but it is proven undoubtedly that it completely messes you up - our bodies are simply not designed to stay awake and function all night so it really isn’t as simple as just catching up on sleep during the day.

DH works nights.

Leaves at 6pm, home at 5.30am.

Stays awake, does some house stuff and drops ds3 to nursery at 8am.

8.20am - home after the nursery run, sometimes has a glass of wine 😂 (I still can't get used to him doing this at 8.20am!)

Sleeps 9am - 4pm

In the army a "sleep" day went to 2pm. Which was fine if you got off at 7:30 as some did. But our shift went from 6pm to 9am so it really wasn't enough.

I would say what your DH needs is to sleep properly, not just in fits and starts.

He's taking the mick, i often work 8pm until 8.15am home by 9 and in bed by 10 and then get up at 3 and do it all again

I used to do the night shift. If he hasn’t already get him some sleeping headphones. He can put music through them at a low level or a podcast so that the sounds of the house don’t disturb him. If he really wants to he can still wear ear plugs under them.

I did constant nightshift for just over a year. It made me very poorly. I was so vitamin d deficient it was unreal and about a month after stopping I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

It really didn’t work for me

Or maybe it just brewing and it made it worse. I’ll never know really but make sure he’s getting a good vitamin d too

Also had two children under four at the time. It was hell. He does need to help you more though.

When I did nights I slept til 4 or 5 - it was absolutely awful I was a total wreck, your body has been shown in studies to never adjust to the change - we are wired by evolution to sleep at night and you can't shift it internally.

I have to say - when I did nights I wrote off the next day as well - but I was in my 20s - I remember being astonished when people I worked with would tell me they wer egoing to pick their kids up from school! I think as a parent you would expect to get up early afternoon perhaps?