It’s sometime after midnight on your first night home, and I just realized why you keep acting hungry instead of settling back to sleep after nursing. You’re cluster feeding. 

We settle in on the couch in the stillness of the living room lamplight, where you can nurse and doze in my arms. After two nights in a hospital room, I’m beyond exhausted and just want to be asleep in my own bed. But it’s a relief to know what’s going on, to know there’s nothing wrong with your latch or with what I’m providing for you. This cluster feeding is normal, and it probably means my milk is coming in. If I have to be awake in the middle of the night, at least I know why.

That wasn’t always the case.

Your brother was almost four months old. I woke up in the darkness, feeling like I’d been struck by lightning. My heartbeats came too fast, my stomach felt as if it were pressed into my ribcage, and my whole body tingled. Something startled me awake, I thought, and I assumed the baby must have cried out. I lay in bed, my pulse still racing, and listened, but the only sound coming from the baby monitor was the static hum of his white noise machine. The house was silent.

What had startled me out of sleep? Did the cats knock something over in the bathroom? Was there a car horn out in the street? My mind raced to find an explanation. What if this was some mother’s intuition—or divine intervention? What if my baby needed me? What if he was in danger?

I got up and hurried, as quietly as I could, across the hall to your brother’s room. In the darkness I could just make out the form of his precious little body. I placed my hand gently on his chest, feeling his slow, deep breaths, reassuring myself that he was safe and sleeping peacefully. I stayed with him for a few minutes, then I went back to bed and lay awake for hours.

A month later, I sat across from a nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. I had finally realized it was anxiety keeping me awake, either in the middle of the night or because I couldn’t fall asleep at all, and that it wasn’t going to go away on its own. She was kind and sympathetic as she listened.

“Are you ready to try medication?” she asked.

“I think I am,” I said.

You nurse again, then fall asleep snuggled against me. Your breaths come steadily, peacefully, and your little body feels heavy as you finally settle. It’s been two years since I asked the nurse practitioner for help, and two years since anxiety kept me awake for hours in the middle of the night. It still creeps in, but it’s tamer now. I know I can manage it—and knowing is a relief.

I hold you for a while, making sure you’re fully asleep before we venture back to the bedroom. I’m thankful to be a second-time mom. I’m thankful for all the things I know this time around that I didn’t know before. There is frustration in this sleeplessness, but also peace. It’s almost morning.

I carry you back to the bedroom and place you in the bassinet next to the bed. You stay asleep, and I think you must be as tired as I am. All that cluster feeding was hard work for both of us. I climb into bed and hear your brother waking up. He calls for me, but I nudge your father awake.

“Can you get him?” I say. “I’ve been up since 3:00.”

Your father gets up and I hear him open the door across the hall as he goes to your brother’s room. I close my eyes, and fall asleep.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Sleepless.”