Well is 3:30 in morning and wide awake, so I thought I might as well write something. I have had insomnia for many many years. I blame it on working night shift for 14 years. I was never a fan of night shift but it was what worked for us. I was home during the day, my husband at night. The kids never had to go to day care this way, plus did not miss out things ( well except sleep). I worked 11pm-7am. I would go home get the kids ready for school and drive the oldest one to school. The youngest one wasn’t in school yet. I would normally sleep after my husband got home from work and after we had dinner. It was usually from about 7pm-9:30pm. Where I worked was about 6 miles from our house, there were many nights as I was driving to work all I could think about was when I could go to sleep again. I was so glad that our youngest son loved the movie Forest Gump and he wanted to watch every day. I know weird movie for a 3\4 year to like, the good thing was I could lay on the couch with him while he watched it and maybe catch a few zzzz’s. When he started kindergarten I was so excited. He went to afternoon class so that meant I would walk him to the bus stop around noon and then I could nap while he was in class. It worked great till phone would ring “Mrs Roberts this is AJ’s teacher again, you weren’t at the bus stop again, so AJ was brought back to school again”. I would jump up and go retrieve my poor abandoned child again. I would set an alarm but I guess I would sleep through it. I was very glad the school understood and didn’t call CPS on us.
I worked with a pretty good group of people on night shift. Many were parents as well and worked night shift for same reason I did. This was the days before computer charting, it was all paper charting. Working med\ surg a normal patient load was 10 to 11 patients. Which is completely unheard of now days. I had to write nurses notes on every patient, chart vitals on everyone, 24 chart checks to make sure no orders were missed, pass meds\IV’s, treatments and whatever else the patient would need. Believe me patients do not sleep at night, so don’t believe the stories you hear that night shift staff sleep all night. Charting was the worst because that’s when the lack of sleep would really hit you. Many of nights I would realize that my charting was not on lines but looked like chicken scratch because you were trying so hard to stay awake but your charting was all over the page. I was lucky if it was a new nurse’s note that no one else had charted on, you could just throw it away and start over. The best part of night shift was I worked with a lot of Philippino nurses and they would cook alot and their food is absolutely the best. I was great when it was their birthday because their tradition was to cook for everyone on their birthday. Best nights ever they would bring so many different dishes and all was so very yummy. The best part of night shift was when day shift started to arrive because you knew soon it would be time to go home.
Well my eyes are starting to droop, so might try sleeping again.
Thanks for reading
Ann