The 4 AM Wake-Up Call I Kept Secret for Years
Ada Feld
6 min read · April 22
Nobody warns you that the hardest hours of new parenthood are also the ones you'll miss.
For eleven months I woke at four. Not to an alarm — to a small, specific noise that I could hear through two closed doors and a fan.
I hated it with my whole body. I have never been so tired, before or since.
What I didn't say out loud, because it sounded insane, is that I also loved it. The house was dark and silent and nobody in the world wanted anything from me except the one small person in my arms.
It ended the way these things end: not with a milestone, just an ordinary Tuesday when nobody woke up.
If you're in it now, I'm not going to tell you to treasure it. It's brutal. I'm telling you that you're allowed to find one good thing in the middle of something brutal, and that doing so isn't a betrayal of how hard it is.
