Sleepwhen you are on call

Change the aim

Deep, unbroken sleep is not on offer while you are on call, and chasing it will make you miserable. The aim is rest you can trust: long stretches of lying still and dozing, with the knowledge that you will wake if needed. Dozing is not nothing. It restores more than lying awake tense does.

So lie down. Breathe out slowly. Let yourself drift without demanding that you go under. If you are woken, deal with the thing, and lie back down with the same instruction. No arithmetic about hours.

Make the waking easier

A baby monitor, or a phone on a video call to the other room, lets you sleep further away and still hear. A bell by the bed means they can call you without shouting. A night light on the landing means you do not turn on the big light and wake yourself fully. A glass of water, the medicines and a torch where you can reach them means the three o'clock job takes five minutes rather than twenty.

Set things up in the evening so that the night asks the least of you.

Share the nights

If anyone at all can take a night, let them. A sibling, a friend who has offered, paid help for two nights a week if that is possible. One full night of sleep in three changes everything. Many people resist this because they are the one who knows how things are done. Write down how things are done, on one sheet, and let someone else follow it.

If you are in a tree here, the night shift is an ask like any other. Put it on the calendar. Someone may take it who could never cook.

Sleep when they do

If the person sleeps in the afternoon, you sleep in the afternoon. Not tidy up, not make calls. Twenty minutes to an hour, on the bed, with the monitor on. This is the one time the rule about short naps bends: when nights are broken, daytime sleep is how you make up the hours.

Notice the limit

There is a point where broken sleep stops being hard and becomes dangerous: you nod off driving, you forget a dose, you cannot follow what the nurse is saying. If you reach it, that is not a sign to try harder. It is a sign to get a night covered this week, whatever it takes.