Why I Stay Up Late, Instead of |Just| Going to Bed

Ashley Elenz April 23, 2019

| Why do I stay up late

Why do I choose to stay up late + wake up looking and feeling like a homeless pigeon instead of just hitting the hay at a decent hour?
I could totally do the latter and wake up early but for this mama, right now, that isn’t what works.

These days I don’t get much quiet time in general, but I definitely don’t get that undisturbed quiet time at all, until well after 10p.m. on most evenings.

To be honest, it kind of sucks.

I know I should sleep. I am beyond EXHAUSTED.

BUT I also need this quiet time.

CLICK ME if you NEED more sleep

| Instead of just going to bed?

I often think to myself I could totally just go to bed now because I AM so tired but there is hesitation because that quiet in those dark hours; that complete and utter silence- that I crave all day in the midst of the chaos + screeching laughter + playing + giggling …is just too good to give up.

I realize too that for me, that going to bed and waking up early just isn’t going to happen right now.
Yes, when the babe was waking up at 4 am pretty consistently I could go to bed, wake up at 4, nurse him and start my day.
Well, now that everyone is asleep until at least 6a.m. it’s reallllly hard to go to bed and then actually wake myself up an hour or two earlier…on purpose.

Soooo my solution: I stay up.

Knowing very well that I will be tired and regret my decision come 630a.m. when my day starts by a toddler loudly asking me to open his water bottle or help him go pee-pee.
Knowing that when I crawl into bed at 2a.m. like a drunk 20-year-old who closed the bar down that I will instantly regret staying up so late. That I will reminisce as I drift off to sleep at that brief moment I had at 9:30p.m. when the faint thought crossed my mind, that “I SHOULD just go to bed.” But consciously said “Yea, that’s going to be hard no for me“

BUT those late hours are the only time I can get things done or get nothing done. Or just sit + bask in the glory of the untainted peace.
You might be thinking, well, what about nap time?

| Don’t Your Kids Nap?

Nap time is tricky. Nap time I can get some things done, and sometimes there is veg-out time but there is always this sense of urgency and impeding awareness that at ANY moment whatever peace and quiet I have will be sucked away in a hot second by a kid waking up before I had intended them to. So as wonderful as nap time is, it kind of a false sense of peace + quiet.

If I were to choose to go to bed at a reasonable hour + wake up early yes I will be rested but for me, just like nap time, there is this lurking notion that the kids will wake up at any moment. Leaving me with a feeling of trying to disarm a ticking time bomb while trying to shove in me time, work time + veg time in this teeny tiny little window of time.

Therefore what I am left with are those late night hours to fill my head space with that quiet me-time, so I can recharge.

Please don’t get me wrong. I love the noise. The chaos.

I get brought to tears everyday at the magical, amazing gift God has given us. So please know, that I am very aware of my blessings and I know that I will miss the noise.

But right now, I NEED that quiet.

As I sit here and type this in these dark hours, there is some great joy and almost euphoric feeling knowing that I could very easily get 6 more hours of this quiet, uninterrupted peace.
I mean, I would really really regret that.
But it’s there for the taking.

So for now, in this season, I will continue to soak up that cushion of time that only exists in the dark quiet mom-owl hours.

Even if it costs me a few zzz’s.