Why Moms Wake Up Tired

Every new parent knows that a full night of uninterrupted, high-quality sleep is next to impossible, and now there’s video evidence. Melanie Darnell, fitness blogger and mother of three, posted a time-lapse video to Instagram that will make parents nod their heads in bleary agreement.

The video, shot with a Nest camera equipped with night vision, shows Darnell going to sleep at 10:00 p.m. At 11:20, she gets up and comes back with an infant. (At this point, we’d be remiss not to remind you the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that parents not share a sleeping surface with their kids until the age of one.)

Anyways, the kid moves around for hours, sitting up and leaning on mom, squirming when cuddled, and even punching mom. Finally, when sprawled out and knocked out, we hear cries of “Mommy” around 1:00 a.m. Enter toddler, stage right.

Mom scoops up the second kid, who promptly falls asleep directly on top of her. A half hour later, she returns the second kid to bed. What we hope are a few hours of consistent sleep follow until 6:20 a.m. when the infant decides it’s time to wake up mom by crawling all over her and, in case that wasn’t enough, throwing a nice hand to the nose.

In her Instagram caption, Darnell says that “Parenting doesn’t end when the sun goes down.” Her two nighttime parenting goals are to get sufficient rest for herself and meet the needs of her children. The video shows that she’s probably more successful at the former than the latter, a reminder that getting enough sleep is one of the biggest challenges of parenting.

Alaska Sleep Clinic works every day to reach moms that need help diagnosing and treating sleep issues for their families, including our regular appearances on KTUU Channel 2’s “Moms Everyday” program. 

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