@beaconpostpartum: I cried so hard at 3:27am that I was trying to keep my face completely still so I wouldn’t wake the baby 😭 Like actual tears running down my cheeks while I’m sitting there thinking “do NOT sniffle. do NOT move. we are NOT starting this feed over again” 😂 She had finally fallen asleep on me after what felt like forever. And I should’ve felt relieved. Instead I just sat there crying. Not because anything terrible happened. I think that’s the part of postpartum I wasn’t prepared for. Sometimes you just hit a wall. You’ve been needed literally every second of the day. You’re exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t even seem capable of fixing anymore. Your body feels weird. Your hormones are everywhere. You can’t remember when you last showered. You’ve reheated the same coffee 4 times. And somehow everyone else in the house is sleeping while you’re sitting in the dark holding a tiny human who apparently has no interest in participating in nighttime 😂🥲 I remember thinking… how is everyone asleep??? Like HOW. How are there people just peacefully unconscious right now while I’m having an entire emotional crisis in this rocking chair 😭 I grabbed my phone because I needed to look at literally anything besides the clock. Then I opened this map. And there were moms EVERYWHERE. Little lights all over the country. I just stared at it for a second. Because every dot was another mom awake right then. Not tomorrow morning. Not someone posting about how hard newborn life USED to be. Right. Then. Somebody was nursing. Somebody was pumping. Somebody was warming a bottle. Somebody was bouncing on a yoga ball praying their baby would pleaseeee close their eyes. Somebody was probably googling “why does my newborn grunt so much” for the 47th time 😂 And apparently a bunch of them were having a rough night too because I started getting hugs. 28 moms sent me one 🥹💜 TWENTY EIGHT. I know it’s just a little button on a phone. I know none of those women actually walked into my nursery and sat beside me. But omg it did something to me. Because five minutes earlier my brain was telling me that I was completely alone. Then suddenly I had proof that I wasn’t. There were moms I’d never met, in houses I’ll never see, awake under the same stupid 3am darkness with me. And idk how to explain it without sounding dramatic but postpartum can make your world feel SO tiny. Your whole universe becomes this room. This baby. This feeding. This wake window. This next hour. And when the night is bad, it honestly feels like it’s going to stay that way forever. Then you see hundreds of little lights and remember there’s this whole invisible night shift of moms happening at the exact same time. 🥹 I think that’s why the hugs got me. I didn’t need somebody to fix anything. I didn’t need sleep advice. I definitely did NOT need someone telling me “sleep when the baby sleeps” 😂🙃 I just needed somebody to acknowledge that this was hard. That I was tired. That crying while holding a baby I love more than anything didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful. That sometimes you can love motherhood and still desperately wish somebody would come tap you out for an hour. Both things can exist. Anyway, she eventually fell DEEPLY asleep. I did the ridiculous slow-motion transfer into the crib where you basically stop breathing 😂 Hand on chest. Wait. Slowly remove hand. Wait. Back away like you’re diffusing a bomb. And somehow… she stayed asleep. 🙌😭 I crawled back into bed completely wrecked. But I remember checking that map one more time. Still glowing. Still moms awake. Still this whole little world continuing while everyone else slept. So if you’re reading this at 2am or 3am or 4am with a baby on your chest… there are so many of us here. ❤️ Feeding. Pumping. Rocking. Crying. Scrolling. Surviving. Maybe even trying desperately not to sniffle because the baby FINALLY fell asleep 😂 The night can feel incredibly lonely. But you’re definitely not the only light on 🥹💜 #mom #baby #MomsofTikTok #momtok #momlife
