Revenge bedtime procrastination is a real thing, and mamas everywhere will know what it is.

I used to be an early riser. I would go to bed early, and wake up early. I loved the mornings. I loved working out in the mornings, I loved eating breakfast, and generally would have said I am a morning person. Fast forward…it is 11:15pm on a Thursday and I am writing this while laying in my bed. I was planning on going to sleep early tonight, and in fact my husband and I came home early from out date night because I was so exhausted that all I wanted to do was get home and go to bed. So why am I writing this here? Because I couldn’t sleep. The kids are in bed, it is quiet, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to sleep right now.

Welcome in Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. This is the researched and determined term used to explain the decision of sacrificing sleep for leisure time. When I look into this, it is cited that “people in high-stress jobs” are likely to engage in revenge bedtime procrastination. That it is people whose jobs take up most of their days that seek or rather steal a few hours from their sleep time, to just get reprieve and entertainment.

So then I find this study that reports nearly all parents, a whopping 95.33%, engage in revenge bedtime procrastination, and moms are more likely than dads to partake in some revenge bedtime procrastination. You know what is the kicker about this though – is that lack of sleep really messes with us, cue increased levels of cortisol when you have limited sleep, which really only increase stress levels, anxiety, and irritability. So we get looped into a vicious cycle. To really top it off, this study found that moms were 3.38 times more likely to feel a significant increase in parenting guilt when sleep deprived.

So I share all of this because while moms talk about being tired, and particularly for moms of babies and littles, that concept of sleep when they sleep or just go to bed when they go to bed, is actually very very hard for many. I absolutely experience revenge bedtime procrastination, and for me it’s not really a time of entertainment, but rather just time that I get to do anything I want. Sometimes I am productive in this time, sometimes I snuggle with my man, and other times I doom scroll Instagram. It’s going to be midnight by the time I shut this down and sleep. I am going to wake up groggy, and frustrated with myself that I didn’t go to bed sooner, and there my friends is the cycling of the loop.

So the next time you share with a mama that they should just sleep, remember that those stolen hours might just be the only time they feel are theirs.