It’s 3:28 AM, and I’ve just settled in to the rocking chair with the baby. He is sucking on a bottle after being sure that we were going to let him starve this time, despite the evidence of all the other times he was hungry and we fed him.
I am groggily opening up every scrollable app I have to keep myself awake for the duration of this feeding. Not many of my friends have posted anything new on Instagram. Facebook becomes more puzzling to me each day. And I don’t have my AirPods on me so I can’t watch TikTok without captions, which only half of the creators use.
So I go to open up The New York Times app.
“Let’s see if the world is ending tonight,” I think cynically.
This headline says yes. That headline says no. Another headline says not tonight, but soon.
This can’t be healthy, I think to myself.
But what else am I supposed to do?
I think about a passage in Kate Bowler’s book, Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved. In it, she muses about the version of herself that catastrophisizes in the middle of the night. The one who imagines every worse case scenario, that sees every terrible end as inevitable.
And she wonders which is the real Kate. The 3 PM Kate? Or the 3 AM Kate? Is either version of herself truer somehow? More honest? Which one sees the world more clearly?
I think this is an important question.
At 3:28 AM, I am not thinking of the pile of dishes in the sink or what outfit I am going to wear to the office next week. I am thinking about the world my children will inherit. The one I’m inheriting now.
I read an article in The New York Times recently about why we tend to be more anxious at night (I did not read this on the night when I wondered if the world was ending). The article said this late night anxiety was an evolutionary feature. We are most vulnerable when we sleep so our brain is trying to protect us by making us think of every possible danger in order to keep us from said danger. Thanks, brain.
I think about all the other parents awake at this hour. Nursing a baby. Hooked up to a pump. Comforting a child who had a bad dream. Cleaning up vomit or changing sheets that are wet. Worrying about their children. Their safety. Their friendships. Their future. The effects of parenting.
Does God stay up late worrying about us?
Does God tune in somehow and wonder if the world is ending tonight?
Never mind, the baby is drifting off on the bottle. His worries for the night—that he would not eat—have been calmed.
I pull him to my shoulder to elicit a burp before laying him back down in his bed.
He quietly burps in his sleep, nuzzling against the microfiber burp cloth draped on my arm. I have noticed he likes to rub his face on this particular kind of burp cloth so I have been using them exclusively at night to bring him an extra layer of comfort.
He will not remember this gesture when he is my age, laying awake at night wondering about the world. Yet, it matters somehow, doesn’t it?
The day in, day out, moment by moment work of caring for a newborn will not be remembered consciously, but it will shape his nervous system, his body, his cognitive abilities. The monotony of parenthood undergirds the foundation of his future in many ways.
And little gestures of added comfort—a few moments of extra rocking, a soft burp cloth, a soft pat on the bum—are flutters of hope in a desperate world.
It is hell out there sometimes, baby. So let me rock for you a little more.
The world is beautiful and terrible. So here is something soft to rub your cheek against.
There are so many things that make me scared for you and your sister, love. Let me get in one final touch to let you know I’m here.
I put down my phone and give in to the moment of rocking a sleeping baby. I will be up again in two or three hours, so I shouldn’t rock too long.
For me tonight, this is an extra layer of comfort. The world may be ending, but I have a baby to rock.
The world may be ending, but I have a sleeping child blissfully unaware of it upstairs.
The world may be ending, but my body still yearns for the bed and the man in it a few feet away from us.
The world may be ending, but it is not my concern right now.