A few weeks ago, I had a bedtime that broke me.
My son was trying to extend bedtime in anyway he could. Desperate for more time together. Pajamas, teeth, bathroom, water, one more question, one more stuffy, one more hug, one more delay. It’s exhausting. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was being a child at bedtime, with no understanding of how long my to-do list had gotten with every minute he extended it.
Meanwhile, my brain was calculating that every minute he was still awake, was one less minute I had for me. Looking back, I don’t even think there was anything that important I needed to do. Some work emails…. finish the laundry sitting half-done since that morning, along with picking up the toys, walking the dog, maybe eating dinner myself. But it was the idea of a reprieve. The idea of that time for me that I mentally had already planned for. I needed that time for me. To not be needed.
So as bedtime was going on and on and on, and I could feel that sacred time for me disappearing, I felt my body automatically tense.
I snapped.
“Mommy is turning red, just go to bed! I just need you to listen!”
The guilt came immediately. This isn’t me. This isn’t the mom I want to be, or am. Who was that?
I went quiet. Let two beats pass. Exhaled.
Then: “I’m so sorry. It’s not you. Mommy is feeling...”
And then I did something I couldn’t have done five minutes earlier. I became silly mommy. The version of me who makes him laugh, who turns the whole thing into a game, who gets bedtime done without it feeling like a fight. It went smooth after that.
Looking back, I’m hard on myself. I don’t like to be that version of me. AND sometimes, me feeling that way is what gets me to the other side. (I just wish it didn’t lead to the reaction, but that’s what my therapy is for working on it!).
But I also realize I couldn’t access silly mommy in the height of it. I couldn’t remember she existed, couldn’t get there from where I was. The skills were there. They just weren’t available until I regulated. Until I let the rage move through instead of trying to hold it down.
That is the whole thing, actually.
As someone who is generally a chill mom, the moments of mom rage shake me to my core. It’s a visceral, out of body experience.
When I do a deep dive into the moments it happens for me, I realize mom rage is rarely about the moment it happens.
Mom rage is a smoke alarm. The alarm is not the fire. It is just the loudest signal that something has been burning for a while. (I wrote a whole article on the the complete guide tot mom rage here).
It wasn’t about the pajamas. It wasn’t about the toothbrush or the water or the questions. It was that I had already daydreamed about that time in my head. I had counted on it. And after being a mom and working all day and being spent in every way. I needed that time for me.
It took me about 6 months of being in this pattern to really reflect, why did this keep happening? Even if I removed all tasks to be done, lowered my expectations, stopped trying to make it be something it wasn’t… I realized later it was bigger than that one night.
When my son was in the NICU, bedtime meant something different to me. We would say goodnight and leave him there. Go home without our newborn. That ritual became everything: safety, comfort, closure, hope, trust, love compressed into one moment at the end of the day. We cherished it so carefully. Bedtime was sacred.
He’s home now. Has been for years. But I realized that I still carry an expectation into bedtime that it should feel a certain way for me and that I need it as a part of my day. The ritual held so much weight once, and part of me still expects it to.
And yet, a rambunctious, silly, mommy loving 4 year old doesn’t know that or get that. He just sees his mommy putting him to bed and wants to maximize that time.
So yes, I probably need to be firmer and have better bedtime boundaries. But I think I also need to change what I expect bedtime to be. What I get out of it. The realization that maybe what I need from it, isn’t going to be what it is. And accepting that. Finding that closeness, that gentle moments in other parts of the day.
But understanding it has helped me stop wondering why a bad bedtime hits me harder than it maybe should.
Mom rage is not a sign that you are an angry person. It is usually a sign that you are a depleted person.
Someone whose needs have been put to the back burner, and by the time evening comes, there is almost nothing left to pull from.
I think of it like an emotional bank account. Every hard moment is a withdrawal. The tantrum in the parking lot. The baby up every hour. The message you answer while making dinner. The noise, the clutter, the mental list that never stops. The resentment for carrying the mental load. The cashier who was too slow. None of those things are catastrophic on their own. But they add up. And when nothing has been going in, even a small withdrawal overdrafts the account.
That is often what mom rage feels like. Not you being a bad mom or failing. But an overdraft.
Your nervous system cannot keep absorbing withdrawals and still respond like a calm, rested person. There has to be something going in.
What changed for me wasn’t anything dramatic.
It was making sure I was restoring my bank account.
If I had moved my body at some point during the day. Whether I had taken a few minutes to shower, or at the very least wash my face. Whether I was in comfortable clothes or still wearing what I had grabbed at 6am (honestly, the best hack to prevent my mom rage is changing into pjs or “mom clothes” before entering the bedtime routine). If I had eaten something for myself. If I had taken 5 minutes to sit in the car alone to decompress before going in the house.
None of those things sound like much. But they are the difference between me being “mommy turning red” and being “silly mommy”.
Restoring my needs throughout the day, gives me capacity for when I’m about to be pushed over the edge.
In the moment itself, the goal is not to be calm. The goal is to regulate enough to be able to use your tools and just get through the moment.
You cannot think your way out of rage while you’re in it. Your prefrontal cortex is not fully online, your amygdala is fired up, your cortisol is building. Sure, the skills are there, silly mommy is there, but she is not available at the height of activation. She becomes available once you let something out. Once your nervous system resets.
What that looked like for me in the moment: I went quiet. I literally stopped talking. I exhaled. I didn’t try to fix it immediately. I just let my nervous system catch up. I looked at how small my sons hands are. I looked at his curls. I looked at him snuggling his stuffed animal.
Then I repaired. “I’m so sorry. It’s not you. Mommy was feeling overwhelmed and it came out wrong.” Simple. True. An honest acknowledgment.
When you’ve repaired enough times, your child learns something important: that people who love each other can lose it and come back. That a rupture is not the end. That repair is part of how love works.
Sometimes what’s underneath the rage needs more than a better day. It needs more than your kid just listening. The antidote to mom rage is support, feeling seen and heard, and having your needs met.
If rage feels frequent, frightening, or connected to something deeper — old wounds, resentment that has built for months or years, a history that motherhood keeps pressing on — that is worth taking seriously. Postpartum anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep deprivation, and undiagnosed ADHD can all show up as anger. So can a relationship where the load has never been shared fairly. I talk about all of these in the Maternal Mental Health library.
Support can look like therapy. Medication. More predictable childcare. Communicating with your partner what your needs are.
That night, after I repaired… after letting myself stop talking, exhaling, apologizing…. silly mommy showed up. We got through bedtime. He fell asleep laughing and smiling and shouting I LOVE YOU. The hour I’d been counting on was mostly gone by then.
But something in me had reset. I wasn’t overdrafting anymore.
The ironic part: that snuggly moment at the end was what I needed more than the hour I thought I needed to myself.
Before we turned out the light, we did what we always do. We call it the little spot of feelings — you name how you’re feeling as a color. He told me he was green, mostly.
Silly mommy, loving mommy, patient mommy was in there the whole time. She just can’t get there from empty.
What’s the thing at the end of the day that you count down the minutes to? Tell me in the comments.
This essay is part of the This Is Motherhood Maternal Mental Health Library.
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I love your insight and thoughtfulness. I am sooo unfamiliar with the rage that motherhood has invited and it throws me off every time. Then comes the shame and disappointment... Your reflections of repairing relationships and expectations and exhaustion are such important reminders. Thank you for offering such healed perspectives. They are truly grounding 🙏🏼
I loved reading this. I have been experiencing mum rage/post partum depression so it’s comforting to hear someone else’s experience. Definitely trying to “fill my cup” so I can be better for my children but I think a hurdle I face is guilt for doing just that.