@beaconpostpartum: I genuinely thought I was the only person awake at 3am with a baby who would. not. sleep. 😭 Like obviously I KNOW other babies wake up at night lol. But when you’re actually sitting there in a dark nursery, everyone else in your house is asleep, your baby has been crying forever and you’ve already tried feeding, burping, bouncing, rocking, walking around the room, changing the diaper, changing the pajamas, turning the sound machine up, turning it down 😂… it does not feel like there are other people doing the same thing. It feels like you and your baby are the only two people awake on earth. My baby went through a colicky phase where nights were honestly brutal. I dreaded the sun going down because I knew what was coming. I’d see 8pm on the clock and already feel anxious about how the night was going to go. One night I was sitting in the chair around 3am and opened this map. Every dot was another mom awake right then. Not someone who WAS awake last night. Not someone posting about newborn sleep during the day. A mom literally awake at the same time as me. Feeding. Pumping. Rocking. Trying to get a baby back down. 🥹 I just sat there looking at all the lights for a minute. Then a mom from New Jersey sent me a hug. ❤️ I don’t know her. I’ll probably never meet her. I don’t even know what her night looked like. But she was awake. I was awake. And for whatever reason that tiny little notification hit me way harder than it should have 😭 My baby was still crying. Nothing magically changed. I still had to keep rocking him and I was still exhausted. But I didn’t feel quite as alone. That’s the part of postpartum I was NOT prepared for. Everyone tells you you’ll be tired. Everyone jokes about never sleeping again. People tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps 🙃 Nobody really explains how lonely the middle of the night can feel. During the day there are texts and visitors and errands and noise and sunlight. At 3:14am it’s just you, a tiny baby who needs something you’re desperately trying to figure out, and your own thoughts getting louder by the minute. And sometimes I don’t want advice. I don’t want another article telling me the perfect wake window. I don’t want to hear that somebody else’s baby started sleeping 10 hours straight at 7 weeks 😂 I just want another mom to be like “yep. I’m here too.” That’s what those little dots feel like to me now. Somewhere there’s a mom making a bottle with one eye open. Someone is pumping and scrolling. Someone is on her 47th lap around the nursery. Someone just successfully transferred the baby to the crib and is standing completely frozen waiting to see if those eyes pop back open 😂 Someone is crying. Someone is laughing at how ridiculous this all is. Someone is sending a hug to a stranger because she knows exactly how much you might need one. ❤️ And eventually that night, my baby finally fell asleep. I remember putting him down and staring at him for a second like… we survived another one 🥹 The mom from New Jersey will never know that her tiny little hug made that night easier for me. But it did. So now when I’m awake and see another mom’s light, I send them one too. Just in case she’s sitting in a dark room thinking she’s the only one awake. You’re not. ❤️ There are so many of us out here doing the night shift together. And if you’re reading this at some ridiculous hour with a baby in your arms…hi 👋🥹 I’m probably awake too. #mom #baby #MomsofTikTok #momtok #momlife

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