To ask what working nights are like long term

[jobchoice]

I'm currently working days but have the opportunity to do the same job but a night shift which equals more pay in salary and no child care.

I've never worked nights before, do you get used to it?

Dc are 5 and 7 so dh will still work days but I could take them to school before going to sleep and wake up in time to collect them saving a lot in child care.

I'm just concerned that nights will be hard to adjust to and weekends I'd want to get up in the day with the family.

Does anyone else make this work.
I'd be doing it purely for the money and up until dc didn't need child care anymore.

It's said to be not good for your general health in the long run but you'd need to research that.
I know a couple who did it - the DH had a 9-5 office job, DW a nurse working nights, and it worked for them. The DH in that family even had a hobby (yes, cycling) and would do that one evening a week. I think they had a strong marriage and 2 healthy well-behaved DC, so might not be representative. Very nice family.

I’m a night owl, so loved working nights and sleeping during the day as a nurse. Many of my colleagues hated nights and felt half-dead working them. What are you, a lark or an owl?

Also worth knowing that long-term nights are bad for health, increasing risk of obesity, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, depression, even dementia.

A living nightmare. Constantly feeling exhausted and sleep deprived because you can't sleep properly in the daytime or get enough quality sleep to feel refreshed. Your diet suffers because eating at the wrong times plays havock with your metabolism. Your mood suffers and you become isolated because the people around you are still living normal daytimes. I found it eventually made me ill and can honestly say from my own experience I would never work nights ever ever again. Not for all the money in the world. No effing way.

Hope that helps! 😃

I worked nights for 4 years and in all honesty it completely drained me. Stopped a few months ago and feel so much better generally.

All of which confirms the symptoms I had and the health implications I was risking before giving up nights 😱

Oh! It's not sounding like such a promising solution now.

I was a nurse for a long time and always had to do some night ,s but after my oldest son was born I did permanent nights for about three years,it was tiring ,I just felt tired all the time .

A nightmare for my OH and he is desperate to come off them , he struggles to sleep properly at anytime now and I have definitely seen over time how it’s chipped away at every part of his life and his ability to muster enthusiasm to do anything - he sleeps and works that’s it .

I work a mixture of days and nights as a nurse. I don't mind them, I do 12.5 hour shifts but never more than 3 in a row. In my experience you do get used to them.

Studies do show that's it's bad for your health as previous posters have said.

Short-term, if you can hack staying up all night, nights could be perfect for you, everyone’s different as your replies already indicate! Why not practise staying up all night? See how you get on? Whether you can sleep during the day with normal daily noise levels?

The killer hours are between 04.00 and 06.00, when your body most longs for sleep. If you have the ability to nap in your break that’s helpful, but unfortunately I’ve never been a napper, if I fall asleep I stay asleep, or feel like shit when I’m woken up.

it depends how easily you can sleep during the day.
I can pretty much sleep anywhere so nights are not an issue for me. Although it is getting harder the older I am getting. Feel I don’t recover as quickly as I used to.

I'm with @MavisMcMinty .
I'm an owl by nature - I'm still in bed typing this!
I worked nights for many years and it suited me fine.
The tricky bit is adjusting to day mode on your nights off.
Living permanently in night mode would suit me but the rest of the world doesn't work like that, so adjusting is necessary.
Quality of sleep during the day is not quite the same I would say, in that I didn't sleep as deeply - possibly due to more activity inside and outside of the house during daylight hours.
I'd suggest you'll flag pretty quickly if you intend to deprive yourself of sleep every weekend to join in family outings - and they won't be much fun either as you'll be walking round feeling jet lagged.
Good luck with whatever you decide.

I use to work nights and was a night owl. I slept during the day blissfully! Until I had kids! Then I could not sleep pat 1pm after kids and I became such a light sleeper that anything woke me up! Which is a lot more during the day than during the night.

Also sleeping between drop off and pick up is not even 6 hrs sleep, more like 5. It's also very very hard to adjust and flip back to days. I decided to stop doing nights 3 years ago as each time I did them I was so grumpy and with so little energy with the kids, it just wasn't fair on them. Personally I would not recommend.

Put it like this...

If you Work 8pm - 8am, take kids to school, in bed for say 9.30am, sleep, wake up at 2.30pm to collect kids then you're looking after kids doing normal evening activities until you go back to work for 8pm.

If you did this while doing day shifts, you'd be getting up at 2.30am every day, can you manage this?

Are you doing 5 shifts a week or longer hours at 3 shifts a week?

To get out of night shift mode, you need to have one day a week where you just power nap in the early afternoon so you're tired enough to go to bed at normal.time. it's awful and you will feel like shit that whole day! You would likely get used to it but it's not easy!

I did 2 weeks a month of night shift pre kids. I worked 7.30pm - 8pm. The day of my first shift, I'd get up early and get my housework done, then go for a 3 hour afternoon nap 1-4, have tea and then get ready to go to work. Work all night, get home, have breakfast, shower and then straight to bed around 8.30am, sleep until 5pm, have my tea, chill and then back to work. Repeat for 4 shifts. Then the last morning when I finished, I'd stay up until 12ish, have lunch and then have a 2 hour nap. Getting up from that nap is still one of the hardest things ever! Especially if my husband was at work until 6... Id often still be in bed when he got home, not usually asleep but just not wanting to get up!!! It's a real slog and that was pre kids so no other responsibilities! You do always feel tired even if you have slept all day long.

It's definitely doable and if you were on permanent nights you may get more used to it but if you're not a good sleeper anyway then it won't be easy.

I suppose you're planning on doing it until your youngest is at high school which could be 5/6 years? Could you give it a go and go back to days if it wasn't for you or delay it until your youngest is a bit older and only do it for a 2/3 years? I think I'd need a goal like that to make it doable for me!

I've worked Nightshift for over 20 years, I wouldn't work any other.
Sometimes it's a bit difficult to sleep during summer when it's light and there's more human traffic around, like kids playing in gardens or dogs barking, but on the whole it's not too bad with earplugs and blackout curtains.

It didn't work for me as I don't do well on under 7 hours sleep a night. I found I gained a lot of weight (eating sugar to stay awake at 4am) and got ill a lot. However it does suit some people more than others. The work itself was better at night. And the colleagues were great. Definitely not all bad and preferred it to day work in many ways.

They make me exhausted tbh! I do a mixture of days and nights as a carer, my pattern is 4 on 4 off to enable me to work opposite my partner for childcare. When I'm on 4 nights I find that better than when I'm given 3 days and a random night.

However, the first night I have no sleep in the day and the last night DP goes to work the same time I get home so I'm up all day with no rest. So that's two 24hr periods (at least) without sleep within 4 days.

Yes I then have 4 days off but they are spent looking after the children and my grandparents. Not to mention general housework etc. I couldn't do it without DP doing at least as much but usually more, than me.

What's your partner like with sharing those kinds of responsibilities? Because if he doesn't pull his weight I wouldn't consider it if I were you.

You end up permanently sleep deprived and overweight because you turn to sugar and caffeine to keep going at 3am.

You’ll crawl into bed at 9:30 after the school run, be asleep around 10am then feel like crap at 3 when you jump out to bed to get the kids ( after only 5 hours sleep) .

It’s atrocious for health. Takes years off your life. Increases risks for heart disease, diabetes and a bunch of other things. Commonly associated with fatigue.

I worked shifts when I was younger and nights were horrendous. Bit different than permanent nights because you’re always adjusting, but it was an utter pain for socialising. DH and I got little time together and what time we did get was odd because we were both on a different rhythm - one winding up while the other wound down. Very hard on most relationships.

I'd say this. If this is absolutely needed to feed and house family, then you shouldn't turn it down.
The rest very much depends on how much you can manage. I personally would find it very difficult to keep myself together mentally, and find more in me to give to my relationship with my kids and husband, and would probably end up in a vicious cycle of not getting enough sleep to see them more, but being to tired to be around.
I'd vote for only in extreme circumstances.

I did it for 15 years, didn't have any of the health issues mentioned. I took the kids to school, then bed , then they caught the bus home. I then had the afternoon and evening with, then off to work. On weekends I stayed awake for half the day, depending on the days plans. I loved it.

You need to take it seriously - get blockout curtains so your bedroom is really dark, turn your phone off, wear earplugs. Good luck!

Would you be working nights soleMy DH will sometimes do a stretch of nights. He gets in to it easily as he's a night owl but coming back out of it can be tricky.

I'm not sure now, perhaps I'll leave things as they are. I want to give 100% to my employer and if I'm tired I might not perform as well and I'd be getting paid more to underperform which wouldn't help anybody.
I think I knew it would be too hard but just needed to hear it.
I think I've decided against it and dh said I'd never see him and the more I type I realise I've just talked myself out of it. Thanks for the replies everyone.

What I meant is, when he needs to be awake in the day after a few night shifts I a row it can be a struggle.