SAHP Burned out and making mistake after mistake

[ajewelinhiscrown]

I do not know what to do. I have been messing up every single day. I am exhausted. I never get enough rest. For context we live in NYC. My wife was supposed to go to the Statue of Liberty with our daughter on Wednesday; that is what my wife told me. I bought the tickets on November 1st. I made sure they were all set with directions and how to get there and they were on time and everything and it turned out the tickets were for Tuesday instead. I don’t know how I didn’t catch that. It was always my wife’s outing with our daughter so I also don’t know why my wife didn’t just have it in her iCal with an alert set. But I have to keep track of everything.

My wife was saying how the bathroom sink wasn’t draining properly. I fixed it and ran the water and stupidly plugged the drain to let the water build up a bit so I could be sure the water would all drain out and I left the bathroom and got distracted by my 3 y/o and doing other stuff and I flooded the bathroom. I almost had a heart attack.

My 3 y/o has swim lessons on Fridays after school but we come home first for lunch and my wife had told me that in the afternoon we were going on an outing (nearby) after picking up our 8 y/o from school. I was so tired I was almost falling asleep on the sofa with my 3 y/o while my wife was working from home on work calls in the other room. After it was too late, I realized I had completely missed taking my 3 y/o to her swim lesson. I was just focused on her and lunch and getting ready for this outing with my wife. But I checked and I didn’t even have her swim lesson on my iCal with an alert and this happened once before.

TL, DR: I cannot keep up. I’m the stay at home dad to and 8/5/3. I keep messing up and making dumb mistakes. I hate myself for this.

 

[psychoclaw]

@ajewelinhiscrown Missed swim lesson? Straight to jail.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@psychoclaw No trial, no nothing.

 

[emersonboi]

@ajewelinhiscrown Getting thrown in the deep end for sure.

 

[mattkelly]

@psychoclaw Believe it or not, right to jail.

 

[tfran]

@ajewelinhiscrown How much sleep are you getting? When’s the last time you had blood work done/ a physical/ checkup with a GP?

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@tfran Well I don’t get enough sleep. Usually about 5-6 hrs per night, I was overdue for my physical in October and just had it in March. Apparently besides being overweight and needing to eat better I was just low in vitamin D and too high in B-12 which I realized was due to a multivitamin plus those Celsius energy drinks. I even had my old (now even retired) family doctor look over my lab work and he said all good. I do need to lose weight. I never stop moving/walking, but with three kids and constant stress my diet isn’t great; I’m not eating salads and paleo all day. Too many carbs.

 

[houseofsaul]

@ajewelinhiscrown Chronic sleep deprivation is a serious problem. After 3 weeks, people being chronically sleep deprived function at the same level as people who haven't slept in 3 days. Would you trust yourself to watch your kids after not sleeping for 3 straight days? Being underslept produces the same results.

That being said, when was the last time you had a 4 hour block all to yourself, no kids? Your brain needs down time too, time to rest and be bored and wander. If you're one of those sahp that hasn't had an afternoon off in six+ months, you need to talk with your partner and set something up. Even if you're the one scheduling the trip to the zoo, let your spouse take them, and you just enjoy the time alone in the quiet.

 

[jmcd]

@houseofsaul If that's true I'm functioning at the same level as people who haven't slept in 28 days lol

 

[bharati21]

@ajewelinhiscrown Have you started taking a Vitamin D supplement? I get low in that and have to take 5,000 IU on top of a multivitamin. When I don’t make it a priority I get tired and it gives me brain fog in a way that sleep cannot fix.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@bharati21 Very smart - yes - as soon as I got my lab results back I began taking a vitamin D supplement every day.

 

[mollyg]

@ajewelinhiscrown Are you on the Rx 50,000 units of Vitamin D? Get on those asap. I had really low vitamin d and the OTC multivitamins are about 1,000 units a day that would only give me 7,000 a week which wasn’t enough to build any type of stores.

Being on them was a seemingly magical game changer. It resolved so much of my fatigue and made me realize how much brain fog I was suffering from after it cleared. It also resolved some concerning hair loss I was suffering from.

It is such a common deficiency that people shake it off as benign but it accounts for so many life affecting symptoms.

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@mollyg Oh god no. Should I be? I can ask my doctor. All I added was a vitamin D supplement of 25 mcg (1,000 IU) once daily.

 

[mollyg]

@ajewelinhiscrown Yes, request them. My regular doctor saw my lab results and didn’t prescribe them but then I met with a rheumatologist who saw the lab values and said that an OTC would not suffice and prescribed the 50,000 once a week rx supplement

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@mollyg I feel like my regular doctor isn’t that good (a PA) even though I ran the lab results by our family doctor who has decades of experience.

 

[mollyg]

@ajewelinhiscrown Do you remember what your values were for the vitamin D?

 

[ajewelinhiscrown]

@mollyg Thank you so much. Yes, I have the blood test results. It says: Vitamin D 25 is 29 L and the non-reactive range is 30-100 ng/ML. Do you think it was this low just due to winter and very little sunshine? Most days in the past months in NYC are cloudy.

 

[mollyg]

@ajewelinhiscrown Mine was lower so maybe you’ll be fine with the OTC ones since you’re just on the cusp. But yeah winter is definitely a reason for lower vit D

 

[oluwayinka]

@ajewelinhiscrown It sounds like you're being too hard on yourself. Mistakes happen, bad weeks happen. It's impossible to perfectly juggle the lives of 5 people by yourself, especially on 6 hours of sleep. It sounds like maybe you need a little break, can your wife step in? Maybe help you get more sleep?

 

[puddintain]

@oluwayinka This is the answer. I'm so much more likely to screw up these kind of things if I'm not sleeping. You need to figure out how to get 8 hours