When a message appeared on her phone from a friend expecting her first baby, Katie hesitated. The question was simple, how was life with a newborn again, now that her family of five had grown by one tiny heartbeat? Her instinct was to respond cheerfully, “It’s wonderful,” and maybe even attach a sweet photo of her sleeping baby. But she paused. It was terrific, but not in the easy, tidy way that word suggests.
Katie remembered when she was the one asking those kinds of questions, still pregnant with her first child, lost in daydreams of cozy nurseries and soft lullabies. She could picture herself then, blissfully unaware that motherhood, for all its beauty, carried a weight she could never have imagined. There had been no way to know that love and exhaustion, joy and fear, could exist in the same breath.
She thought back to bringing her first baby home and the shock of how hard breastfeeding really was. She’d skipped the breastfeeding class, assuming it would come naturally. After all, every other mammal managed it. Yet there she was, sitting up at 2 a.m., tearful, frustrated, wondering why something so instinctive felt like climbing a mountain. The nurse who’d warned that new mothers spend eight hours a day nursing wasn’t exaggerating. Those endless hours of feeding and soothing blurred the line between one day and the next.
Then came the exhaustion. Everyone tells new mothers they’ll be tired, but no one can honestly describe the bone-deep weariness that settles in after weeks of broken sleep. It’s the tired that sits behind your eyes and makes time feel foggy. For five years after her first child, Katie rarely slept through the night, and she’d forgotten that kind of fatigue until her new baby, Jared, arrived.
And then there was the loneliness, the kind that seeps into quiet hours when everyone else is asleep. The house feels too still, the clock too loud, and she is the only one awake, cradling her baby in the dim glow of a nightlight. Simple errands become impossible challenges, and every outing requires calculations around feeding schedules, diapers, and nap times. Many days, it is easier to stay home.
Back then, she had scrolled through social media, looking for signs that other mothers struggled too. The perfect family photos made her feel like she was the only one stumbling through early motherhood. She wanted to see someone else admit they cried without knowing why, or that “baby blues” sometimes felt heavier than expected. But those moments never appeared on her feed. Instead, she saw smiles and matching outfits, not the tears behind closed doors.
Years later, with her third baby in her arms, she revisited all of it, the sleeplessness, the worries, the endless cycle of feeding and burping, and second-guessing herself. Despite being an experienced mother, the old doubts crept in, was she giving enough attention to her older two children? Were they watching too much TV while she fed the baby? Was she falling short again?
And yet, amid the fatigue and guilt, love was so enormous it filled every crack of her being. There were quiet moments when she held Jared close and felt time slow down, when she inhaled his newborn scent and realized how fleeting it all was. Motherhood was hard, yes, but it was also sacred. Chaos and beauty knotted together, a daily test of endurance and a constant lesson in grace. The house stayed messy some days, and the laundry pile mocked her from across the room. Some nights, she thought she couldn’t stay awake another second. But she knew she wouldn’t trade it for anything when she watched her children sleep, their chests rising and falling, and their small fingers curled in dreams.
Katie understood now that motherhood wasn’t something anyone could explain fully. It had to be lived, felt, survived, and cherished. So when her friend asked how things were going, she didn’t send a long message about sleepless nights or the ache of self-doubt. She just smiled at her baby, thought about all the chaos and wonder wrapped into her days, and typed back a simple answer that carried all the meaning in the world. It’s wonderful. Because it truly was, in every messy, exhausting, beautiful way.
