@beaconpostpartum: I swear there is something about being awake between 2 and 4am that makes everything feel 10x heavier. Last night it was 3:52am. I had already been up multiple times. I couldn’t even remember how much sleep I’d actually gotten because it was all in these tiny broken pieces. 20 minutes here. Maybe an hour there. Then awake again. The house was completely quiet except for the sound machine and my baby breathing. And I was sitting there thinking… how can I love this little person THIS much and still feel this lonely? 😭 That’s the part of postpartum I wasn’t prepared for. Everyone tells you you’re going to be tired. Nobody really explains what broken sleep does to your brain. Or what it’s like when you’re awake at an hour where it feels like literally every other human being on earth is sleeping. My husband was asleep. My friends were asleep. My mom was asleep. The neighborhood was completely dark. And there I was rocking a baby at almost 4am, trying not to cry because I knew I’d probably be doing the exact same thing again in another hour or two. I grabbed my phone because…what else do you do 😂 And opened this map I found recently. Every yellow light was another mom who was awake. I just stared at it. There were SO MANY. Like hundreds of tiny lights scattered everywhere. And I know this sounds dramatic but my whole body relaxed a little. Because suddenly 3:52am didn’t feel quite as empty. Somewhere another mom was nursing. Another was making a bottle. Another was pumping while scrolling TikTok trying desperately not to fall asleep 😂 Another had probably JUST gotten her baby down and was terrified to move. Another was on wake-up number 4. Another was wondering why her baby suddenly decided 3am was a great time to practice smiling 😭😂 Another was probably sitting in the dark feeling exactly like I was. Then I saw you can basically send little hugs to each other. No awkward introduction. No trying to make a new friend at 4 in the morning lol. Just… I’m awake too. 💛 And then moms actually sent some back to me. That got me. 🥺 Because I didn’t need someone to fix anything. I didn’t need sleep advice. I didn’t need to hear “sleep when the baby sleeps” for the 900th time 😂 I didn’t even necessarily need a conversation. I just needed proof that I wasn’t the only person awake doing this. I think that’s what can be so hard about postpartum. You can have people who love you. You can have a supportive partner. You can have family nearby. You can have friends checking on you. And STILL feel incredibly alone at 3:52 in the morning. Because nobody is actually in that exact moment with you. It’s you, your baby, a dark room, and a brain that has had approximately 11 minutes of REM sleep 😭 Seeing all those lights doesn’t magically make my baby sleep. It doesn’t make me less tired. But it changes the feeling of the room. Instead of: everyone else is asleep and I’m alone. It’s: oh. We’re all over the place. Little nursery lights on. Kitchen lights on. Phone screens glowing. Moms rocking babies in houses I’ve never seen, in cities I’ve never visited, having their own version of the exact same night. And somehow that matters. 🥹 So if you’re reading this during one of those middle-of-the-night feeds… hi. I’m probably awake too 😂 And so are a whole bunch of us. We just can’t see each other’s lights from our windows. 💛 #mom #baby #MomsofTikTok #momtok #momlife
