Tiredness Befalls Us All At Some Point😴

This bit I can understand, well, for the dog anyway. After all, that's all our family cairn terrier spent most of his time doing when he was alive.

By the same token then, as babies and toddlers, sleep continues to remain uppermost in their daily activities. Were you aware that newborn babies during the first three months of their life, spend as much as 14 - 17 hours in any 24-hour period sleeping? Developmentally, between 4 months and 11 months, this reduces to around 12 -15 hours. As a toddler (from the age of one to two years) that same amount of sleep reduces to between 11 -14 hours a day, and the pre-school years of 3-5 years, then drop to just 10 -13 hours in a 24-hour cycle. Data surrounding this was provided by The Sleep Foundation.

It certainly remains very obvious why there is this vital need for such patterns of sleep of course.

Babies need more sleep than adults because they are growing at such a rapid rate. The pituitary gland, responsible for secreting growth hormones, works more quickly when babies are asleep. The average weight gain of babies aged 1 month to 6 months is a staggering 5-7 ounces a week, so you can see why they need so much shut-eye!

When we are sleeping is also the time scientists believe the brain organizes itself, stores information, and replaces lost chemicals. Babies absorb so much new information while they are awake experts believe that their brains need extra time to process this information.

Babies also seem to sleep a lot in the day because they wake up every few hours to feed, especially newborns.

Sleep is also important for your baby's emotional well-being. Babies need enough sleep to feel energized, so they can play and enjoy exploring their world. If your baby is tired he or she will feel grumpy and irritable (as most adults would!)

Babies.co.uk.

2️⃣3️⃣ years on, my wife still laughs when she reminds me of the time when our first baby girl was born into our world, and much of my grumbles were about:

1️⃣ "Is she ever going to wake up?"

2️⃣ "I'm bored, is she going to wake up sometime soon, I just want to play with her🤣!"

Those very moments are most likely very common-place memories that new parents have all gone through over time of course.

So moving on many years forward in our own adult lives, just how much do adults need, when it comes down to the need for that 'downtime?'

I can remember that, throughout all my 3️⃣2️⃣years of having worked in psychiatry, caring for others, I was consistently astonished at just how little sleep I truly got after completing a typical shift.

Four hours, sometimes less...

Just how I survived on so little sleep for so many years remains a mystery to me. However, since catching up with many of my previous colleagues who have since retired either due to natural age, disability, and/or burnout, perhaps there is some explanation to be discovered after all.

Burnout has become a big concern within healthcare. It is a response to prolonged exposure to occupational stressors, and it has serious consequences for healthcare professionals and the organizations in which they work. Burnout is associated with sleep deprivation, medical errors, poor quality of care, and low ratings of patient satisfaction. Yet often initiatives to tackle burnout are focused on individuals rather than taking a systems approach to the problem.

BMJ 2019;366:I4774. Published 30th July 2019.

Far too regularly I have spent many times complaining bitterly now since I have been at home over the last 2 ½ years since Covid-19 struck long-term disaster to me. Before contracting the deadly virus back in 2020, my right side was considerably weak, causing gait and coordination difficulties as a result of having had Brain Cancer when I was 3 years old.

But I managed to get by for many years and adapted to life in my own way.

I resisted ever giving up.

The Borg never assimilated me🤣.

Until the Covid pandemic. Then my life took a downturn that forced me to give up work, and take early retirement on medical grounds from nursing. My eventual discharge back home exacerbated a disability that I had long ago learned to manage and this had worsened to the point where I am now in constant pain and breathlessness, and unable to walk more than 20 meters in distance (that's just a distance of 65 feet!)

Okay so I've adapted, in just the same way as the Enterprise crew adapted their weapons whilst fighting back the Borg.

But good god, nobody warned me about sleep!

That's me now!

I think all those years of just getting four hours of sleep every 24 hours have finally caught up with me...

I keep having to remind myself of this each time I feel the drowsy moments come over me.

I can be awake and watching television or writing my latest article one minute, and the next... my brain shouts at me telling me it's time for a snooze.

That's life and I'm happy with it now...

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