Fox Anchor Falls Asleep On-Air After 8-Month-Old Daughter’s Rough Night

Any parent to young children knows all too well the struggle of getting a decent night’s sleep — add a morning news show hosting gig to the mix and you just might end up falling asleep on the job.

That’s what happened to Good Morning Memphis‘ Dominique Dillon, who accidentally dozed off in the middle of a recent broadcast in a clip that has since gone viral.

The FOX13 Memphis news anchor and mom of two appeared on the Today show to discuss the viral moment, revealing she had been running on roughly two hours of sleep after staying up late the previous night taking care of her 8-month-old and 2-year-old.

“The night before, my husband, he worked a double at BNSF Railway,” Dillon explained on Wednesday. “I have a 2-year-old. I have an 8-month-old. And I was trying to get them down to sleep at 8:00, but my 8-month-old, she wasn’t having it,” she continued. She said she “just couldn’t console” her teething daughter and that “nothing was working.”

“Next thing you know it’s 10:30, 11:00, before I can actually get her down to sleep. Then all I have is a couple of hours of rest before I have to be up in the morning and be at work.”

As for the moment when she was caught snoozing live on the air, Dillon said she wasn’t even aware she’d fallen asleep until “my meteorologist, Brittani Dubose, whispered my name from across the room.” She said her producers in the control room didn’t intervene because they thought she was “looking down at my tablet.”

“Because who falls asleep in one minute, sitting up, in front of cameras?” she joked.

“I opened my eyes, and it was cutting to the next shot, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. I can’t believe this just happened to me. I am mortified,” she continued. “I was pinching myself under the desk like, this has to be a nightmare. Like one of those work nightmares, because it’s not my life right now.”

Dillon said that she had received mostly positive feedback from the accident, saying she was touched that “people understand what I’m going through as a mother.” She even took a moment to remind other parents that they’re “doing a great job” too.

“To the mothers out there, those long nights, they’re worth it,” she said. “Continue to show up to work, give your best, and then also come home and give your best to your children as well, because all they want is for their parents to show up and be there for them.”