Advice about night shift

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I was hoping I might be able to receive some advice about surviving night shifts from some BTDTs.

My husband is about to start a new night shift position in a few weeks. Except for the hours, the position will be great and we are excited for it. The problem is our home.

I WAH with two small children, a 4 yr old and a 2 yr old. Normally we are out of the house for most of the morning, but let’s face it, when kids are at home, they are not the quietest bunch. Our house is not very big so it is not like he can go sleep in another part of the house, either.

Does anyone have any advice about how to best manage the night shift? I know he is planning on blackout curtains, melatonin and possibly a white noise machine. What other advice do people have about best managing this both in regards to the children and with the least impact possible on his health?

The night shift is currently permanent but he says the company generally promotes people quickly out of the night shift as day shift positions become available. The problem, being of course, we do not know how long ‘quickly’ will be for us.

Note: we do have a semi-finished basement. I did suggest that we get an air filter for it and try to make it more hospitable so that we have a place to play in poor weather.
 
I find that an MP3 player on the lowest possible setting with a continuous run of podcasts is better than white noise, personally. The voice of someone reading a book on tape is more like the background of voices in the house. (I use soft earbuds and only put a bud in the ear that isn’t in the pillow.) TV or radio are OK if it is a public station. The Golf Channel works, too. The others tend to have a bit too much pizzazz in the commercial breaks. Whatever TV your husband tends to sleep in front of would be what you’re aiming for.

The main thing with kids isn’t voices so much as setting vibrations going through the floors and walls–balls bouncing, toy cars zooming across the floor, chairs scraping.
 
In addition to what he already has planned I would also say EARPLUGS. A lot of people don’t like the idea of earplugs but the squishy foam ones are comfortable and can be reused a number of times, especially if you keep your ears clean. I worked deep nights for a few years from the time my kids were 10, 5 and 3. I only used blackout curtains and earplugs and found that to be effective. There were a couple of times that things got out of hand and woke me, but it was never a big problem.
 
I worked night shift for three years. At the time my children were school aged, and had a paper route. When I arrived home from work, I spent a short amount of time with my family and then went to bed. The first few weeks I had trouble adjusting, but once I got a “bedtime” routine established I did okay with getting enough sleep, despite the normal daytime noises.

What I found to be a more troubling aspect was the feeling that I had that the rest of the world was on a completely different cycle. I felt out of sync with everything. But in time, that too changed and I got used to making the most of the weekends and cherished the time I could spend with family.
 
I worked night shift for 8 years straight. In addition to the blackout curtains. You can also consider painting your room a dark color. We painted our bedroom a very very dark gray. Its on the verge of being black, but not quite. It made a huge difference in my quality of sleep. I’ve also heard of people who placed aluminum foil on their windows to keep out the extra light that peeps through the blackout curtains . But for me personally blackout curtains and the dark room color does the trick. As far as noise goes. I know some of my coworkers who sleep with a fan on during the day. It helps to keep out the extraneous noise and many people like sleeping in a cool room.
 
Night shift is no joke.

For some people it can be a tough adjustment to make.

I worked 24 hour shifts as a paramedic before I got married and had kids and a lot of the overtime I worked was strictly night shift.

My husband has been rotating between nights and days every three months or so for the past 7 years.

He is on nights right now and I actually posted a thread asking this same question a few weeks ago…specifically about the kids.

I have a 3.5 year old and a 19 month old and will have a newborn in another couple of weeks.

Our house isn’t huge either.

I’m not sure how your hours are in terms of your work schedule and how many hours you need to clock in…if it’s flexible…take advantage of that.

I’ve developed a pretty strict routine with my girls. We get outdoors a lot and if we’re inside we do quiet activities like watch tv, read books, art projects and play-do.

I’ve taken advantage of weekly play dates, parks we can walk to, story time at the library…anything and everything to get the girls out of the house for a little while so my husband can sleep.

Sometimes you have bad days and you’ll just have to keep your patience level up and solider through it.

My husband has used aluminum foil and pinned canvas material around the windows in our room.
He also takes melatonin to help.

I’ve had to learn to work hard at my patience levels.
My husband and I do snap and bicker at each other far more then we do when he is on his day shift rotation.
It’s improved remarkably this time around…for some reason we both seem to get it now.

If this might become more a permanent thing…it will probably be worth your while to work on that basement and get a decent play room down there.

Our basement is not finished and definitely not safe for our kids to play. It would solve a ton of our noise issues if we had even a half finished basement that was safe enough for the girls to play.
 
Ear plugs. Moldable ear plugs. That’s what I call them. I don’t know what they are called. They are a bit like clay and you insert them into your ear. dh has used them since baby was born. Not night shift but for sleep since baby was up and crying most nights. They were so good that he stopped believing that we had bad nights.

We are in Europe so I don’t know if you get the same ones. They are a Swiss make.
 
BTDT for 3 years waiting for DH to get on day shift. I was working part time so 2 days a week the kids were with a sitter. The rest of the time we just did quiet activities in the house. We put those rubber floor tiles in part of our basement to give us a playroom/TV room a little bit away from where DH was sleeping. But most of the time he never noticed the kids. What bothered him the most was the neighbor’s mowing their grass while he was trying to sleep.

DH used Mack’s ear plugs, a fan, and a blackout curtain that we velcroed over the window to block out the most light possible. Making a routine and sticking to it were critical for DH to get a good day’s rest.
 
I worked the night shift for 30 years. dark curtains, ear plugs, noise machine turn off phone in room. Have kids play in a room not near Dad’s area. God help you.Sleep med.
 
Dacinom said:
Try even to have a beer or relax for a while when he gets home nice and quiet in a cool & dark room to unwind. Yes you can have a beer at 8 am!
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My husband does this almost every morning he comes home from work.

I fix him one of his favorite breakfasts and I make sure he has a glass chilling in the freezer.

A beer does help him unwind a little…but sometimes it’s not the best idea because he is up an hour or two later to use the bathroom.

But, there is definitely nothing wrong with a beer in the morning for two reasons…

A) It’s always 5 0’clock somewhere.
B) His 7 am is a dayworker’s 7 pm.
 
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