New Moms: Someone is praying for you

When you’re a new mother, you are often up during the night. Maybe your baby is hungry or needs a diaper. Maybe they’re teething or not feeling well. Maybe they’re happy, but they’re wide awake and wanting to play. Sometimes they just need their mother’s arms.

Those are special times for a new mother, but they’re also exhausting. Sleep deprivation combined with the weight of parenting and all the emotions of that role can wear a mother down. Those hours during the night can be long and lonely.

Still, even in the middle of the night, a mother caring for her child is not alone. God is with her, of course. And out in California, a convent of nuns wakes up during the night just to pray for new mothers during what they call a “Mothering Hour.”

What a beautiful act of love.

The Norbertine Canonesses of the Bethlehem Priory of St. Joseph are a cloistered order in Tehachapi, California. They make cheese and breed dogs and sell sheep and cows. And once each night, they wake up and pray together for an hour for new mothers who are also awake, caring for their babies.

The prayer is part of the seven hours of the Divine Office, which the Sisters celebrate throughout the day. And it all starts at that early hour, praying for mothers tending to these new little lives in the dark quiet of the night. What a lovely act of compassion to accompany these new mothers and their babies in prayer.

“By waking in the middle of the night, we are expressing our readiness to meet [Jesus] when He comes,” the Sisters’ website explains. “But, for so many, midnight can also be a time of darkness, loneliness, and fear. Like the selfless mothers whom we hear from, who wake up at this hour because their children are in need, we also wake up to attend to the spiritual needs of souls all over the world, and especially to those most in need of a mother’s caring love.”

How beautiful that is, the idea of waking up to attend to the spiritual needs of souls around the world.

Although the Sisters have been praying in this way for years, this first came to my attention—and many, many others—when Catholic watercolor artist Leanne Bowen, shared this Instagram post about her experience praying with the Sisters during a retreat there.

That was in December 2023, and since then, mothers have found comfort and peace just knowing that the Sisters were praying for them and their babies. As they paced the floors and rocked and nursed their children, the mothers might have been exhausted and depleted, but they were also held in prayer.

What a gift to those mothers and their babies. What a beautiful reminder of the importance and power of prayer. And what a lovely invitation to each of us to pray for people—those we know, those we don’t know, those who might need it most in this moment.

Next time you wake up during the night, maybe you can send your own heartfelt prayer into the darkness. God is listening, and he knows who needs it most.

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