Middle of the Night Motherhood

You know the scene, mama. It feels like you just drifted to sleep when you hear their tiny cry. That tiny cry only gets louder as you lay there wondering if they are going to put themselves back down, knowing all too well it is likely they will not. You are not sure you can find the strength to swing your legs to the side of the bed in preparation to stand up and go tend to your little one.

And yet, you always do.

In those first few weeks with Perry, the ones where he was up every two to three hours like clock work to nurse, I felt what parents all across the world feel. It’s the most bizarre type of exhaustion, almost like you’re so tired that you aren’t even tired anymore. I think so much of the fatigue is not just from the middle of the night wakings, but the fragility of your mental state following giving birth or bringing home a newborn. Not only are you working every day to adjust to your brand new normal; you are not afforded the restoration that a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep can serve up. This can lead to a feeling of total isolation. A different kind of lonely. One that is often described as feeling homesick.

For me personally, the cycle of breastfeeding was undoubtedly weighing on me in those first few weeks. Although determined to successfully breastfeed for the experience and thrilled to be able to do so, I still felt trapped in the cyclical schedule. As my sister once described, it’s like being on a hamster wheel. It isn’t a hamster wheel that you necessarily want to get off of, but damn what you wouldn’t do for a water break. The mentally taxing task of being my baby’s sole food source at every hour of the day was challenging me to a different degree, yet was something I felt so grateful to be able to do. An absolute mind game to say the least.

During one of my middle of the night nursing sessions, the loneliness swiftly crept it. In an attempt to find connection, I posted a picture on my Instagram story. I snapped a very dim-lit photo of me feeding PJ and accompanied it with a time stamp that displayed 3:32AM. The caption read “where are my middle of the night feeding mamas at?” To my delight, throughout the next day, I received a number of messages from other mom’s saying they, too, were up feeding or rocking around the same time.

And then it dawned on me.

Every single night, at all hours, there are parents everywhere caring for their little loves. In every city, state and country. In every type of neighborhood, in every kind of family. Babies do not discriminate; they will wake and cry for your attention no matter if you are white, black, or brown. Wealthy or poor. It makes no difference if you are a single mom, a two-dad family, or a mom-dad family. It is an experience that any new parent of a newborn will consume. Whether you birthed your child, adopted your child, are the guardian to your child, or are a foster parent, those frequent middle of the night feedings in the first few weeks are inevitable when you are caring for a growing baby.

With this realization that was born from all of those private messages, I was afforded a sense of unity that I was desperately seeking. I suddenly felt so much less lonely knowing my experience was not mine alone. Even though this was a fact that I already knew, that I was not the ONLY parent on the planet awake with an infant, to hear it from real, living-breathing moms was such a gift. From that moment on, every time I found myself in the nursery glider feeding Perry in the deep hours of the night, I imagined every other parent across the world in the exact same boat as me. I envisioned all of the other breastfeeding mamas swinging those legs out from under their covers, scooping up their tiny babies from their bassinet. I closed my eyes and imagined the tiny glow of every lamp-lit nursery with a parent rocking their little one, offering a comfort that only they can provide. I experienced deep solace thinking about all of the moms patting fervently for a burp. All of the dads bouncing and shushing in a dark hallway. I felt such a release of relief that even though I could not see these parents, I knew we were in this together.

So to any of you in the trenches of those first few months, I want you to remember this: even though it may just be you and your baby in that dimly-lit nursery, you are not alone. We, too, are looking down at that sweet, wide eyed child, wondering how one can be so exhausted, yet so in love all at the same time. I want you to remind yourself that like everything in this life, this too will not last forever. These night wakings will become less and less as your baby grows. Your sweet little love will become big enough and brave enough to no longer need your comfort in the middle of the night. Soon enough, their little bodies will be able to sustain until morning and without warning, you will be waking to the rising sun and sprinting to check for their tiny breath. I imagine we will feel refreshed beyond what we can currently imagine. And although it is what we have been dreaming of, I feel certain the realization of a chapter closed will hit our mama hearts hard.

So for now, in the midst of some of the hardest and longest days of our lives, let us not forget that middle of the night motherhood? It is sacred. It is a chapter of your baby’s life that they will never remember and you won’t soon forget. Hold onto the nature of just how special that is; for in the distant future, I imagine we will yearn for the dim-lit nursery days. I envision years from now, when I am watching Perry walk out of our home to begin writing the chapters of his own life, I will have flashes of his tiny face. The face that would glow with a grin as he gazed up at me from his crib. A smile that frequently threatened to bring me to my knees. I assume my mind will be flooded with memories of his warm cheek pressed against mine as I patted for a burp while he dozed off on my shoulder. I will be waving goodbye to him with pooling eyes, silently reliving the nights I thought I would never miss. I will desperately wonder how I could have ever wished away those nights, when the world was silent and it was just us two.

So, Mamas. Parents. Hear me. Let’s not wish it away. Let’s drowsily swing our legs out from under those covers and allow ourselves to be overcome by gratitude. Let’s walk into that nursery, pick up those tiny humans, sit down in our rockers and allow the feeling of sacredness to take hold. Give it permission to latch on for good so that we don’t find ourselves years down the line wishing those deep nights had imprinted more vividly.

To my Perry James: it is both the honor and heartbreak of my life to spend these sacred nights with you. An honor because they will eventually transform into memories that only I have the key to. Heartbreak because I know accessing them will wreck me someday. To reminisce on just how perfectly you fit in my arms. To unlock the images of a brand new mama and her first born. It will all unravel me at a moments notice, I feel sure. But I’ll take the future wreckage. I’ll endure the rubble that will undoubtedly emerge in exchange for our cherished middle of the night encounters. The one’s that will soon be another stored memory.

I’ll see you tonight, my boy. Just you and me.