Has Modern Parenting Pushed Us into Shift Work Sleep Disorder?

Have you ever heard of Shift Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD)? Me neither. But this week, I’ve been swotting up on this circadian rhythm condition which affects workers on non-traditional schedules, especially night or changing shifts. Around 8.7 million people in the UK work non-traditional hours – and I would include myself in this number as I write to you at 22.32 on a Saturday night – and about a third of them will experience SWSD.

This week I got results back from an extremely thorough and holistic health investigation. Over the past six months, I’ve been struggling with a range of symptoms, including low blood pressure and faintness, an inability to stay awake in the afternoons and problems with my periods and moods which I’ve shared a little about here before. Turns out – perhaps unsurprisingly - that some of these issues are related to changes in my fertility cycle as might be excepted for a 42-year-old woman. But the picture my results painted pointed even more strongly to another set of hormones which I hadn’t considered, as well as providing convincing evidence that I’ve totally fucked my sleep.

Outside of serious crisis moments, I’ve been fortunate to have never suffered from insomnia. I have some friends for whom the inability to fall asleep casts a dark shadow over their lives, and I have so much sympathy, because there is nothing more anxiety inducing than watching the hours after 1am tick by. I’ve always felt lucky that I fall asleep effortlessly and wake up seven hours later unless one of my children has something to do with it. I’ve never worried that I had any issues whatsoever with my sleep. Sometimes I do rise feeling decidedly unfresh and I’ll frequently stir just before my alarm goes off amid a low-grade panic attack – which I had always attributed to a dream I couldn’t remember. But I suppose I thought this was normal for a stressed-out working mother of two. My sleep feels ropier when my husband is away – which is a frequent reality – but I hadn’t really noticed much else about it. The penny hadn’t ever really dropped that maybe my unusual working schedule might be playing havoc with the system.

I write until around midnight most nights of the week. I’ll usually take Sundays off unless I’m on a really tight deadline, but even if I go out to socialise or for work, I’ll still try and get some typing time in before bed. My late night working is a typical example of what sociologists have termed ‘split-shift parenting’. I get up every day at 7am, drop my kids at school at 8.15am, start working at 9am and finish my first shift at 4pm. I then collect my boys, bring them home for homework and family time before feeding, bathing and singing them to sleep. I’ll then have a light dinner and re-open my laptop around 8pm for a second shift of three or four hours. By splitting your shift in a flexible line of work, you lose TV time in the evening instead of time with your kids and can log a 50hr+ work week while preserving family time every single day of the school week. In stats that will offer few surprises, mothers are four times more likely than fathers (44% vs. 11%) to cite caregiving as the primary reason they work odd or late hours. Notably, fathers’ shift patterns rarely change based on having children. My husband does occasionally work in the evenings, but it’s nothing like my now entrenched split-shift pattern.