@beaconpostpartum: I cried because a complete stranger in Ireland sent me a virtual hug at 2:33am. Yep. That’s where we’re at emotionally these days. 😂😭 And I don’t mean a cute little tear rolling down my cheek. I mean full-on ugly crying, trying not to wake the baby, wiping my nose on the burp cloth because the tissues were across the room. Over a HUG. From a woman I’ve never met. Who lives thousands of miles away. Motherhood is WILD. 🫠 Here’s the thing. I’d had one of those days. You know the ones where nothing is technically wrong but somehow EVERYTHING feels wrong? The baby wouldn’t nap unless I held her. I’d eaten approximately three bites of a granola bar and half a banana that was originally intended for my toddler. My house looked like someone had robbed it but only taken things out of drawers. I’d been wearing the same leggings for three days. And my husband asked what we were doing for dinner, which nearly sent me into orbit. 🙃 Not because he did anything wrong. But because I had made approximately 700 decisions that day and the thought of making ONE MORE made me want to scream into a pillow. By 10pm, I was done. Like DONE done. Except, obviously, the baby wasn’t. So there I was at 2:33am, rocking her in the dark, staring at my phone. And I was feeling that really specific kind of loneliness that comes with having a newborn. Where you’re literally never alone. Someone is always touching you, needing you, crying for you. But somehow you feel like the only person awake on the entire planet. And you start having those weird 3am thoughts. Am I doing enough? Why does everyone else seem to have this figured out? When was the last time someone asked how I’M doing? Then I opened Beacon. I’d found it earlier that week and honestly just liked looking at the map. All those little glowing dots showing other moms who were awake. Something about it was comforting. Like, okay, cool. I’m not the only one negotiating with a seven-pound dictator at an hour when even the raccoons are asleep. 😂 But that night, something different happened. A notification popped up. A mom in Ireland had sent me a hug. That was it. No long message. No advice. No “have you tried putting her down drowsy but awake?” JUST A HUG. And I absolutely lost it. 🥹 Because this woman didn’t know me. She didn’t know I’d cried in the shower that morning. She didn’t know I was feeling like a terrible mom because I’d spent half the day wishing someone would just take the baby for an hour. She didn’t know how badly I needed someone to acknowledge that I was there. But somehow, from across an entire ocean, she made me feel seen. And I think that’s what gets lost in all the conversations about motherhood. We don’t always need someone to fix things. Sometimes we don’t want another suggestion or another article about sleep schedules. Sometimes we just need someone to say, “Hey. I see you. This is hard.” That’s it. No judgment. No solutions. No comparing whose baby sleeps worse. One in North Carolina. One in New Jersey. Women I’ll probably never meet. And I found myself wondering what their nights looked like. Were they feeding babies too? Were they pumping in the dark? Were they crying over absolutely nothing and everything at the same time? I hope whatever they were going through, that little notification made them smile. Even for a second. Because sometimes a second is all you need to make it through another hour. Anyway, if you’re a mom reading this in the middle of the night… With a baby on your chest, a cold cup of coffee somewhere, and approximately 47 unanswered texts because you don’t have the energy to respond… I wish I could send you a hug too. 💜 Not because you’re doing anything wrong. Not because you need fixing. Just because motherhood can be really freaking hard, and you deserve to feel seen in it. And to the mom in Ireland? You have absolutely no idea what that little hug meant #mom #baby #MomsofTikTok #momlife #newborn

beaconpostpartum

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Monday 09 November 2026 19:05:41 GMT