Mom Blog About Staying Up Late Goes Viral After Two Years. Is She Still Awake?

No one can really prepare you adequately for parenting. You can listen to all your friend’s stories, read through the parenting books by the experts, and browse the web for real-life stories, but the reality is never really captured. One mom wrote about how little sleep she gets as a mom and yet decides to stay up past the time everyone else is asleep just for some quiet time. This stuff isn’t talked about in those books and this mom’s blog post about staying up late has gone viral. Two years after it was initially published and we’re concerned — is she still awake now?

Katy Anderson is a freelance writer and a mom who wrote a blog post for Mom.com highlighting the struggles of parenting and sleep. She discusses the very relatable struggles of never feeling like you get enough sleep as a parent, “Since I first became a mom over 10 years ago, I ache for sleep in a way I have never ached for anything,” she writes. “But try explaining that to a baby or young child.”

The post was originally written two years ago in April but it was all over social media this weekend being shared among parenting circles. In her blog post, Anderson acknowledges that she could get more sleep if she just went to bed earlier.

After her children are settled in for the night and soundly asleep and she’s had some alone time watching Netflix with her partner, Anderson says she still chooses to stay awake. “There’s something so magical about staying up later than everyone else in your household,” she writes. “For one thing, it’s deliciously quiet. You can eat, wear and do whatever you want. And the best part? No one will ask you for a damn thing.”

She’s not wrong: there is magic in the quiet hours when everyone is asleep. Whether those quiet hours come at 5am before anyone is awake or at midnight when the house is soundly asleep. “It’s like a mini-vacation, one that I desperately need after a day that’s almost entirely devoted to the needs of others,” she says, and it’s a genuine way to put it.

One of the best things about parenting is how universal our struggles are. Even things like yearning for a good, restful night of sleep, but also, at the same time, craving the stillness a parent can only get when the kids are sleeping.

Anderson’s post was written two years ago and yes, in that time, there’s likely been an ebb and flow for sleep patterns, both hers and the kids. But what she writes is still relevant now, a struggle that so many parents face, and it didn’t likely go viral again because she’s been awake this entire time.

Hang in there, parents. Sleep comes eventually.