At 4 am, the world outside is fast asleep. But for 26-year-old Merlin Prescilla in Chennai, the night has barely begun. Her nine-month-old son, Francis Methuselah, is awake again, his tiny cries piercing the silence. She’s exhausted but alert, rocking him gently, her eyes heavy from yet another broken night of sleep.

“You can’t sleep properly,” she says. “I have to be awake when he is, and I have to be cautious.”

This is the reality of early motherhood — relentless, emotional, and often invisible. It’s a time when days blur into nights, when small victories feel monumental, and when love coexists with uncertainty, guilt, and sheer physical exhaustion.

From breastfeeding battles and postpartum depression to the societal expectations of ‘bouncing back,’ five South Indian women open up about the messy but beautiful chaos of being a new mother — and the people who kept them afloat.

‘No one told me it would be this hard’

The romanticised image of motherhood — glowing smiles, cuddly babies, and picture-perfect moments — rarely captures the tough, tangled first months after delivery.

For Merlin, the first thing that caught her off-guard wasn’t sleepless nights or even breastfeeding — it was something far simpler. “I didn’t know how to put a diaper on my baby,” she recalls. “Everything felt new and weird. I was stressed, and I couldn’t even lactate the first day.”

Pearl Porshi Arockiaraj, a 25-year-old mother from Thanjavur, echoes the sentiment. “Honestly, I still feel like a baby while navigating this........

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