I hear you.
During the first week home from the hospital, my daughter, for two nights, refused to sleep lying down. My husband was working, so my mother and I took 3-hour shifts, holding her in the rocker. She slept, and we struggled to stay awake. My mother said the rosary and I surfed the internet. Somewhere in the middle of one of those nights, at the end of my rope, I posted on Facebook. I jokingly begged someone to take a shift of this round the clock vigil. A fellow late-night Internet surfer, who happened to be struggling with infertility, told me to stop whining that she would take my situation in a heartbeat. At that moment, I took her comment to heart and, for a very long time, didn’t speak out about our problems again.
See, in the middle of the night, that plea to Facebook was a cry for help. Even as a new mother of a week old baby, I knew something was wrong. Every maternal and teacher fiber of my being was screaming, DO SOMETHING!!! THIS IS NOT RIGHT!!! Breastfed babies don’t spit up this much, and breastfed babies gain weight, children don’t cry all of the time! I was reaching out into the unknown for someone to agree with me. I was looking for someone who had stood in my shoes and knew what to do. I was looking for a lifeline.
Almost seven years later, I now know, I was right to feel the way I did that night in the rocking chair. I wish I had asked the right question so that help could have arrived sooner. But the past is the past, and we move on. But what I have learned gives me the ability to help others. So when I see a plea on Facebook now, I usually message the person and say trust your gut. In this day and age, when social media can make you feel isolated, left out, and depressed, it can also provide support, comfort, and the realization that people out there are listening.
So, if you feel like there is something wrong, push for answers. Even when the doctors say nothing is wrong, keep fighting. When the people around you tell you that you are nuts because you think you see something that they can’t see, keep fighting. Someone will hear you. There is help waiting.
Sometimes, that is all a person needs.