#i just realised i’m going to have to wake up at 8am everyday till next saturday 😭

[musingsofanewbienurse]

Importance of Sleep

Growing up I’ve always been told the importance of sleep, how you should get your 8 hours to allow your body to recharge and heal. In today’s society, where everything is so fast moving and people are expected to carry out dozens of tasks simultaneously, whilst not being even as half as active as our ancestors to tire our bodies out, it means that getting enough sleep is easier said than done. It just takes one simple google to find hundreds of articles from people complaining about poorly they sleep and their resulting tiredness.  

I’ve spent many a night tossing and turning, whether that due to be stress keeping me up or because I just don’t feel tired, and that has always impacted my performance the next day. Which, as a nurse on a busy hospital ward, could lead to dire consequences.

My family have also never been a fan of having lie ins. My dad wakes up at 8am on weekends and my mum rarely past 7:30, and subconsciously I have grown up turning my nose up at sleeping till 10 or 11 in the morning, viewing it as a waste of the day. It has lead to me not always getting the rest I desperately needed on my days off, as I pushed myself to get up at 8 (9 at a push) when not at work. During university that method was fine. Placements ran for an average of 6 weeks, so even though by the end of this time my exhaustion levels were at their peak, I then had a 2 month theory period to rest and recover. Since qualifying, where I work three to four shifts a week, every week (with a much higher day:night ratio than I ever had during my training) I have since learnt that my previous attitude to sleep and rest was in desperate need of getting updated.

It all came to head at around Christmas time of 2018, when I had been working for just over two months and my body was crying out for some time out. I was lucky if I was managing 8 hours on my days off, and averaging around 4-5 on days when I was at work, equalling to one very sleep deprived gal. I hated the idea of napping, viewing it as a waste of time and as a form of weakness; although I tried to get early nights (often going to bed at around 9pm) I would regularly be tossing and turning for hours or waking in the middle of the night and unable to get back to sleep until my alarm was due to go off. With every passing minute still awake I would be working out how much sleep I was losing, which caused my stress to increase and my brain to be waking up more.

My workouts at the gym also suffered. Although I have the goal of always going on my days off, I rarely had the energy for it and I probably only had one or two decent workouts during the entire month of December. Looking back on it I’m amazed I didn’t fall ill as I was at such risk of burning out.

On the 27th (after pulling 6 12 hour shifts in the space of 7 days) I headed to my family home for a week with the promise to properly rest my body. I slept soundly for at least 10 hours each night and had an afternoon nap nearly every day. But I refused to feel guilty about it as I once would have. My body needed this rest and it was not a sign of weakness I told myself. I know I’m healthy, I’m an active person with a very active job, and it means that because of that, I need to properly rest it when I get the chance.

On entering the new year, one of my resolutions was to start taking the pressure off myself when it came to sleep. For so long I had refused to nap during the day, convinced it would lead to a poor night’s sleep, but I had been having those anyway. Maybe if I had a lie down during the day, yes I wouldn’t sleep all the way through the night, but I would be less sleep deprived come morning.

It was also becoming increasingly clear that going to bed at 9pm was doing very little good for me, and I resolved that if I was unable to sleep, instead of spending hours tossing and turning, and therefore forming a very unhealthy relationship with my bed, I would try meditation or do some light reading in hopes that my brain would start to relax and allow me to drift off. I listen to James Smith’s podcast and he recently spoke of a 5 minute challenge he does everyday. At around the same time each night he would go to bed, turn off the lights and attempt to sleep, if, after 5 or 10 minutes he is still wide awake he would get back up and work to start slowly unwinding, but more often than not it’s enough to help him drift. I’ve been incorporating this into my daily routine and have noticed it does help. And even when it doesn’t, it still successfully works to get me off my phone and break the never-ending social media scrolling cycle we all undoubtably find ourselves in.

Since putting thought into my sleep, and consciously working to improve it, I’ve come to accept that going to bed early wasn’t necessarily a suitable goal for me. I work so many nights which has caused my sleeping pattern to be almost non-existent and I’ve realised that sometimes the best thing to do is to sleep whenever I get the chance, even if it’s not at a ‘socially acceptable’ hour. Keeping to a proper sleeping routine is best for most people, but with the nature of my job I’ve had to accept that this isn’t the case for me. For so long I was trying to do what I thought was best and what I had been told or read on the internet, without spending time actually thinking about my lifestyle and situational factors. When I did that over the Christmas period, I realised that actually, having a set bedtime just doesn’t work when I spend some months working 9 nights and the next only one.

I am also working to remove the taboo I have placed on having a lie in. Sleeping in late does not automatically write the day off, nor does it make me an unproductive slob, in fact, it gives me the energy to actually carry out my goals. Three times in the past seven days I have slept well past 10am (and on all of these occasions I have slept for 12 hours apiece) showing me just how much I needed the rest. And you know what? I have been productive on those days still. I’ve gone to the gym, had good workouts, carried out errands, visited friends and completed some writing.

On waking up and checking the time I sometimes still have an immediate feeling of panic on seeing that the morning is almost over, but each time that’s becoming less and less. 2019 is the year of sleep, and it’s becoming bloody glorious.