My baby wakes up every two hours. The monitor showed me what’s doing it.

Even before I had the baby I knew I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same bed as him. I was traumatized at an early age when someone from my home town lost a newborn when their alcoholic husband rolled over onto the child in the middle of the night and suffocated the poor thing. It was the talk of the town for years.

I knew when we rented our house that I needed to make sure there would be enough space for a nursery. Luckily we found the perfect space that had two upstairs bedrooms that were nearly conjoined if not for the smallest hallway keeping them apart. The nursery itself didn’t even have a door so I knew that if I kept our bedroom door open I’d always be able to hear the baby cry even if I were to slip off to dreamland. Just across the hall but not too close for comfort.

I thought at first that some space from the baby would put my mind at ease. We both had our own place in the house and for some reason that made me feel safe.

Everything was fine at first. The baby was content and for about 3 weeks my husband, Tim, was able to stay home with me after giving birth to help with everything while I healed. I was grateful for his help but he had to quickly go back to work. He’s planning on taking a longer parental leave in a few months but his job is important and they need him there for the next two months at the very least. He’s an engineer and they’re revamping the local jetport. “Hard thing to put on hold”, he said when the conversation first came up. I don’t blame him. At first I even thought I’d enjoy the time alone with the baby. Boy, was I wrong.

During the second week of Tim being back at work the baby started getting extra fussy on me. Our doctor said he was likely suffering from colic, but I couldn’t stop thinking that something else might be wrong. I stayed up for hours researching ways to help and possible causes of the baby’s lack of sleep. And the crying. God, the crying. Like clockwork, every 2 hours on the dot. He wakes up screeching. My research always lead me to what the doctor said. Colic. I just couldn’t get it out of my head that it didn’t feel right. Call me crazy, but I think it was a mother’s intuition. In fact, I now know it was.

I know what you’re all going to say, “this bitch is definitely suffering from some kind of postpartum issue”. All I can tell you is the facts. Don’t believe me if you want, but I need to put this out there. If there is even the slightest chance that this will reach someone who has experienced something like what I’m going to tell you, then I don’t care if the whole world thinks I’m bat shit insane. If you are out there, please.

Waking up every two hours to a screeching baby has put me into a zombie-like state. When I’m able to get some sleep it doesn’t feel restful. I’ve even had moments of sleep paralysis where I can’t move my body but my mind is alert and waiting for the crying to start. It’s only happened a few times but what else has been happening is far worse.

Every time I do manage to fall asleep I am consistently awoken by a guttural voice saying “wakey wakey”. Every time I hear it I wake up in a crashing panic. Immediately followed by the sound of the baby’s howling. It’s like some fucked up alarm clock that happens just before the baby cries. Every. Two. Hours. I drift in and out of sleep in those two hours and I’m always awoken by that voice. I know it could just be my crumbling psyche. I’ve read all the new mother books. Even read the stuff they don’t want you to know. Like the way you often need stitches down there after giving birth, how much you bleed in the days after, and how all of that makes going to the bathroom a gnarly expedition. I know what to expect from postpartum. This feels different.

I don’t recognize myself. The dark circles propping up my eyes when I look in the mirror could convince anyone I was going loony. Here I am still trying to convince you that I’m not crazy even though I know the more I try the less sane I’ll seem. Anyways, I’ve made my point.

But you’re right. I could just chalk it up to lack of sleep. Postpartum psychosis. Whatever. If not for what I saw at 6am this morning.

My husband suggested setting up the baby monitor to help me keep an eye on our son while I try to sleep in the other room. I thought this was silly at first because of how close our rooms are, but it was a gift from our baby shower so I couldn’t think of a good argument against it. I thought I wouldn’t need it, but as I started to struggle and got less and less sleep I began seeing the value in having the camera next to me in the hopes of being able to avoid some trips to and from the baby’s room. Breast feeding on top of everything else has left my body feeling extremely weak. Just walking has started becoming difficult.

At 4 am this morning I did something I never thought I’d do. The baby was screaming again so I desperately googled ChatGPT to ask it how to get my baby to sleep. After giving the AI all of the context of the situation, it had the bright idea for me to set an alarm for a minute before the next two hour mark. It said, and I quote, “Perhaps the baby is being bothered by some kind of sensory issue. Car lights from outside. A cold draft. An unpleasant texture from a blanket. Some children are more sensitive than others.” Having had sensory issues myself as a child I thought why the hell not? I’ll wake up just a second early and study the baby’s environment on the monitor to see if there’s anything that could be waking him up. Unlikely, but I had absolutely nothing to lose and a dream of all of this ending because of something as simple as a blankets texture.

I really didn’t think I’d find anything out. The alarm went off and I woke up with blurry eyes. It took me a few seconds to adjust them before I saw It on the monitor. A tall black silhouette leaning its head down into my baby’s crib. It seemed to have the form of a human being but much taller. Its face moved. Not turning, but changing.

I froze. Ten seconds, maybe twenty. What finally snapped me out of the freeze was the sound from the monitor. It arched its head down next to my baby and whispered “wakey wakey”.

The monitor made the voice sound so mechanical and gruff. I grasped the monitor and let out a pained shrieked. This must have alerted the figure because as soon as I made a noise it grabbed the crib bars, slowly pulled itself upright, and looked. Not toward the door. Or the crib. But directly at the monitor.

I heard the baby howl, dropped the monitor, and ran into his room. The shape was gone. I haven’t seen it since but I’m scared shitless it’s going to come back. For a split second, when it looked my way, the figure’s face seemed to morph into the shape of some sort of animal. A dog? A hyena? Buffalo? I swear. It’s like the form was fluid. Moving. Changing. One second I thought I saw a person with a long face and the next I saw a buffalo with horns.

I don’t know what I saw, but now I know what is making that awful noise and I won’t go back to sleep. I’m so afraid of hearing it again. Of it coming back. I want to call my husband to ask him to come home but I don’t know if I can tell him everything without him wanting to admit me to a hospital. It took me too long to type this. My son is still crying and I only have 24 minutes left before 8am. What if it doesn’t stop? When will it stop? Please. How can I make it stop?

If I don’t update in the next 2 hours please call the jetport and ask for Tim. Ask him if his wife’s name is Holly.