Sleep Analyst

After being so proud of myself a few weeks ago, I missed an update last week. I had a busy week: I had a root canal, my son started day care, I bought a new car, and overslept twice, making myself late to pick my daughter up from school. It's because I work nights that I am so sleep deprived. After three years of only napping for a couple of hours here and there a day, we put our son in day care so I could get a full day's sleep. The first week didn't work out so well, with all the errands factored in. And once I did get to sleep, it was hard to wake up, hence the oversleeping. Especially Saturday - I slept for about 13 hours. After I had spent the rest of the week on the go, without a chance to write, I thought Saturday would allow me plenty of time to make up for it. Not so. I had severely underestimated my level of exhaustion, which had apparently reached 11. This amount of sleep is rare, especially during the day. I'm accustomed to about 5 hours a day, at most. And although I've worked nights for 7 years now, on my off days I sleep at night, like the rest of the world. Getting several hours of sleep in a row is much more refreshing than 2 2-and-a-half hour naps a day; thirteen hours of sleep is the kind you get to compensate for those naps getting disrupted. Wonder what a professional sleep analyst would say about it? I myself would have no idea.