The Sleepwalkers

Head aching, puffy eyes half-closed, I paced the moonlit floor with my newborn son. Patted. Twisted. Hummed. Resented my hard-working husband’s sleeping form. Simmered in anger that the baby would not JUST GO BACK TO SLEEP! Hadn’t I just fed him one hour ago? Or was it two …

I peered through the blinds at our quiet street, washed in orange-yellow haze of the lamplight. I felt so alone. Who else could possibly be awake at 3 a.m., wearily soothing a fussy baby?

But then, as I looked up at the moon, the answer came. My friend had given birth a week after me. Twenty minutes across town, just like me, there was another woman pacing the floors, looking out at the stars, and trying to sooth her baby to sleep. And suddenly, I felt a surge of hope.

“When you walk the floors late at night with your baby girl, pray for me,” I told her the very next week. “And I’ll do the same for you. You aren’t alone in this. We can do this together.” And we did.

Less than two years later, both my friend and I were blessed with newborns again. The struggle of raising two little ones so close together in age pushed us to our limits. But together, as we paced and prayed, we grew strong.

At our mid-week Bible Study, a new mom came in. She tried to act like she had it all together, but my friend and I could see by her face that sleepless nights were taking its toll. “When I had my first child, I felt so alone,” my friend encouraged her. “But Katherine told me that every night – whenever her baby was awake -- she would pray for me. And she asked me to pray for her.” My friend and I glanced at one another, our eyes full of immediate understanding. “It meant so much to me to know I was not alone.

“Tonight, as we all walk the floors with our babies, we’ll pray for you too,” she added. “And we’ll all make it through together. You’ll see.”

It took 19 months for my second son to sleep through the night. It was one of the hardest challenges of my life. But I made it with my sanity intact because God sent me other moms – physically far, spiritually near – to pray me through, hour by hour, night by night.

And now, we often look back and tell other new moms our greatest secret weapon: If you pray together, you will never feel alone.