Surviving working midnights

[Ranger__101]

I was wondering how the other Officers on the board survive odd working hours and sleeping schedules.

I am attempting to live some form of normal life while working from Midnight to 8:00 am. From there I head home and try and sleep from 9:00 to about 2:00 so that I can be up and awake and manage to get some stuff done before the wife and little one come home. Then it's back for a nap at 8:00 and up again around 11:00.

The split sleep is not the most fun, but I'm usually waking up at 2:00 pm any way even with out an alarm. On my days off I try to sleep at night but that doesn't alwasy happen and there are several times where I'm wide awake at 3 or 4 am.

[corporal716]

I too can not sleep past 2:00, most days 1:00 or 1:30. I'm okay if I get six hours of sleep. I try not to go to bed until around 3:00 a.m. on may days off. That way I can sleep, but do not sleep the day away. It just doesn't work if I try to sleep before 3:00 a.m.

I don't try to take a nap befor work. If I did I would never wake up for work.

[Babysmamadrama]

I found that not having the quietest, darkest room I can get during the daylight hours kept me awake. I think its important that you get the condititons to simulate nighttime as best as possible.

You could also try doing the chores before you hit the sack and wake up when your clan comes home, and having dinner with them. Nothing too heavy or you will want to fall back asleep again before your watch.

I rotate every 28 days and it is a dog to deal with the first few days back, you just never fully acclimatize to the times you are awake. I believe there have been studies done on how detrimental the hours of police work are on officers.

Not that it will change. (sigh)

[mcsap]

I work a rotation of 2 weeks days, 2 weeks 2nds and 2 weeks of 3rds. I n the middle of the 2 weeks of 2nds I get two midnighters thrown in. It is NOT my sched of preference.

I use the soft foam earplugs, turn the phone off in my bedroom, have blackout blinds and curtains. My wife didn't even wake the morning of 9-11-01. I don;t get up unless I HAVE to.

You just get used to it after while but I would love to get off of the mids.

[Darin]

I rotate every 7 days. The first midnight is a rough one. I go to sleep as soon as I get home and wake up about 2-3. I found IF I can sleep a few hours before going in at 12 is best for me. I usually can't sleep before going in tho.

[dwf]

We were finally able to strike a deal with Admin allowing us to stay on a shift for 90 days with the option to switch or stick with what we have. Constant rotation isn't something we have to worry about anymore so I don't have that to deal with. I've been on graves so long my body has adjusted to it. Like others I wake up sometime around 2 or 3 just before the kids get home from school. Piddle around the house, help with homework, make dinner and somewhere between 6 and 7, will lay down for another hour or so.

I do have blackout blinds and they make a HUGE difference in being able to stay asleep. The room is as dark at noon as it is at midnight. My kids are out of the house at school all day so I don't have the noise to deal with other than the dogs barking occassionally. The phone ringers are turned off, message machine on mute, and I keep a small fan running near the bed just to have one more layer of white noise covering anything else.

[michiganstud]

On dispatch rotation I work two 12 hour afternoons, then three off. Then two 12 hour midnights then 1 day off.

That one day is hell because I have to catch only 3 or 4 hours of sleep to be able to sleep that night so I can wake up for my day shift.

Other than that I like it, gives me three and 4 days a week to fit in my reserve hours.

[Nole795]

I worked permanent midnight shift (9P -7A) for my first year and half as a patrol officer. Like the others, I blacked out my windows so it would be pitch black in my bedroom. That helpd tremendously. I was a bachelor at the time so I slept till I woke which was about 3:30 PM. We worked 4 days on with three days off. On the fourth day of work, I would just stay awake through the day so that way I could get back in tune with all my friends schedules and sleep at night. I didn't want to live like a vampire on my days off. It was rough the first few months but I started adjusting easier. I hated the midnight shift and was overjoyed when my bid for afternoon shift went through.

[SnowLeopard]

While not currently an officer (was one before, trying to get back into it), I do have the odd sleep schedule. Ie: worked the midshift for the past 12 years, gone to class full time, earned two degrees, done an assortment of various activities such as, currently, scuba, belly dance and ballet in a different city, class, and, usually, switched to day schedule for weekend activities. While my work schedule generally remained the same (did change out into other sections during off school times), my class, activities, professional training (at work and my own) times have shifted constantly.

First question: are you married, do you have a family? That can have a big impact on how one handles such a schedule for if one is single, they usually have more energy to apply to themselves.

Is that a tip? Well, only in that one should realize that if they are married and they are trying to match one to one with a single person on the same kind of schedule, they have to realize that there are some differences in the applier of the sleep/wake equations.

Now, I use a lot of physical/mental training that I have learned over the years, such as from marksmanship, such as from ballet, to use the mind and the body to keep awake or to catch micronaps. These things include the ability to focus, the ability to clear the mind and relax it for quick entry into sleep, and at some points, the ability to catch thirty second micronaps while standing on one's feet.

The point is, if you have training from other activities, try to find ways to use them to help you in this area.

I insist on full lights at my work center. Dim lights activate very easily a depression state in me and depression states lead to fatigue and sleep.

Over the years, a wierd (for lack of better terms) reinterpretation of night has occurred for me, at least in dreams. Ie, I will be dreaming that it is night and yet, the internal 'flags' will identify it as day, ie, my defination of what is day. This might help if one no longer sees night as the rest of the world does, no longer sees it as "night".

It is, right now, 0300 where I am. And that is all that it is to me. It does not carry the impact that it is 0300 in the morning, no, it is just 0300 on the 24 hour clock. When I was working on my first bachelor's and was not working nights, 0200 meant that there was much time left to study but 0400 meant that it was very late into the night, that it was "old", "tired" to me. Now, 0400 doesn't feel late but rather, if anything, that the shift is half over.

If one can reinterpret the night (and believe it), it might go easier on them. I realize, however, for those who don't spend years on the night shift but rather, shift in and out of it, that not only is this not easy, but also, there is probably an intense wish to maintain the outlook on how they see day, of how they might yearn to return to day.

Assuming that one can have a consistent sleep schedule, treat that sleep, that bed time, as normally as you can. I find my best sleep is when I can dress for bed, when I can see it as a solid "night" block, when it is seen as the end of "day". Often, of course, my approach to sleep is to treat it like a nap which works, but it is not as satisfying.

Try to find some mental sequence, a memory perhaps, that relaxes you rapidly and enables you to fall asleep quickly. Mine is remembering my time on the research trawler, of how my life consisted of my belongings that I could fit on my bunk. I return to that, perhaps imagining of how I might have done it better, expanding my capability while keeping to minimal space........and that usually puts me to sleep rather rapidly.

One thing I have found is that it is usually better not to "totally recharge the sleep bunkers" but rather, leave some uncharged space so one can use a quick catnap here and there to fill those but also, have a feeling that they are building a backlog. This may be imagination such as seeing the extenstion of one's self by conserving water supplies by drinking rainwater instead. One believes that because they have aquired more resources from somewhere else, they can go a further distance.

One thing: it is probably useless to expect those who work during the day to understand what it means to have to sleep during the day. Often I come across those who believe I have unlimited free time since I have no day commitments (which I may or may not have).

Finally, every so often, I do take a sickday off to get a solid block of sleep. One must recognize that they are running a severe strain, no matter how the handle it and therefore, one should really REST if they can to avoid getting run down and really sick.
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("Hello. This is Nick Knight. I'm either sleeping or otherwise unavailable. Please leave a message at the beep."--Nick's phone machine, (wtte), "Forever Knight")

[dwf]

I don't know about anyone else, but I suddenly got very sleepy!

[jatty26]

I couldn't even finish that one!

[Stump]

I work the midnight - 8 AM shift, and have for the last 3 years. Luckily, my sig other works the same schedule, and we don't have kids yet.
We have tried a few things:
1) going to sleep as soon as we get home for about 4 hours, then napping for another 3 hrs before work. I don't care for that because studies show that splitting sleep doesn't ensure you get proper DEEP sleep, and I am also worried about oversleeping.
2) going to sleep at 1400 until 2230. Seems to waste the day, but at least we have the whole morning to do whatever we need to.
3) sleeping from the time we get home until about 1600. That didn't last.

I find that the 1400-2230 (which usually ends up with us going to bed at 1700 though) works the best. We get uninterrupted sleep, and have a good chunk of time in the AM to piddle around the house.

I made curtains that keep most of the light out, which helps SO MUCH!!