@beaconpostpartum: The loneliest I’ve ever felt was 3:33am holding a sleeping baby in a completely dark house. Which sounds weird because I wasn’t technically alone. I had this tiny warm little person curled up against me. But everyone else was asleep. My husband. My friends. My family. The neighbors. It felt like the entire world had shut off for the night and somehow I was the only person left awake. And the worst part was that I couldn’t even really do anything. She was finally asleep, but every time I tried putting her down she’d wake up. So I sat there. Afraid to move. Phone brightness basically at zero 😂 Watching the clock go from 3:33 to 3:47 to 4:02. Those hours do something to your brain. You start thinking about how tired you are. How different your life feels. Whether you’re doing any of this right. How badly you want someone to talk to, but also how ridiculous you’d feel texting someone at 4am just to say: I’m awake and this is hard. Then I opened this app and saw the map. I genuinely thought I was looking at it wrong at first. There were lights EVERYWHERE. Each little yellow dot was another mom awake right then. Not someone who had been online earlier. Another mom who was up with me. Feeding. Pumping. Rocking. Trying another transfer to the bassinet. Scrolling because the baby finally fell asleep but now she couldn’t. Hundreds of completely different lives having basically the same night. I zoomed out and just stared at it. It didn’t make me less tired. My baby didn’t magically sleep through the night. I still had no idea if she’d wake up the second I moved my arm 😂 But that room suddenly felt different. Because somewhere behind every one of those lights was another dark nursery. Another exhausted mom staring at a clock. Another baby who apparently didn’t receive the memo that nighttime is for sleeping. I think that’s what surprised me most about postpartum. You can be needed every second of the day and still feel incredibly lonely. Sometimes you don’t need someone to fix it. You just need proof that you’re not the only one living it. At 3:33am, those little lights were enough 💛 #mom #baby #MomsofTikTok #momtok #momlife
