Not because I could not. Because every time I thought about it, the logistics felt overwhelming. The diaper bag. The timing around feeds. Whether he would cry in public and I would not know what to do. Whether I would cry in public and everyone would stare.
So mostly I stayed home. And mostly I told myself I was fine.
My husband went back to work two weeks after the birth. My mother came when she could but she lived in Tampines and I was in Jurong and the MRT felt very far away with a newborn. My close friends were either childless and busy with their own lives, or they had older kids and had somehow already forgotten how brutal the early months actually were.
I remember one afternoon sitting on the floor of the nursery while my son finally napped, feeling something I could not quite name. Not sad exactly. Not ungrateful. Just — alone in a way I had never felt before, even though technically I was never alone anymore.
That was when I realised something needed to change.
The Lie I Had Believed About Motherhood
I think I had assumed, without realising it, that becoming a mother would automatically come with community.
Like the village would just appear. Neighbours would materialise with casseroles. Other moms would find me somehow. Everything I had read made motherhood sound like this naturally social experience, all soft morning light and coffee catch-ups with other women who understood exactly what you were going through.
The reality is that the village does not appear on its own.
You have to build it. Deliberately, sometimes awkwardly, often when you are exhausted and unwashed and the last thing you feel like doing is making new friends from scratch as a grown adult.
It is uncomfortable. It is also completely worth it.
Where I Actually Found My People
The Postnatal Exercise Class I Almost Did Not Go To
Around the three month mark I signed up for a postnatal fitness class mostly because my body felt foreign to me and I needed to do something about it. Community was not on my mind at all.
But something happens when you put twelve sleep-deprived women in a room together with babies strapped to their chests or parked in strollers along the wall. There is an immediate, wordless understanding. Nobody is performing. Nobody has the energy to. Someone’s baby has a blowout mid-class and instead of horror there is just collective laughter and someone producing extra wipes from their bag.
I met two of my closest mom friends in that class. We did not become close immediately. It took a few sessions of small talk, then one conversation that went longer than expected, then a WhatsApp group, then coffee after class that stretched into lunch.
It grew slowly. But it grew.
If you are looking for somewhere to start — a postnatal class, a baby gym class, a moms’ yoga session — do not underestimate it. You are not just there for your body. You are there for the parking lot conversations afterward.
Facebook Groups (Yes, Really)
I joined a few Singapore parenting Facebook groups during pregnancy mostly to read other people’s posts without contributing anything. For months I was purely a lurker.
Then one night at 2am while feeding my son I posted something in desperation — something about whether it was normal for a three month old to only nap for twenty minutes at a stretch. Within an hour I had forty-three responses from women who were also awake at 2am with their own babies.
That was the night I stopped lurking.
The groups I found most genuinely useful were the smaller, more specific ones. Large general parenting groups can get overwhelming and occasionally hostile. Smaller groups built around specific things — your neighbourhood, your birth month, breastfeeding, a particular parenting philosophy — tend to be warmer and more practical.
Some of those online connections stayed online. A few became real friendships that moved off the phone and into actual coffee shops.
Do not discount online community as not being real community. At 2am when everyone you know offline is asleep, it is the realest thing there is.
The Neighbourhood I Had Ignored For Two Years
I had lived in my neighbourhood for two years before having my son and could not have named a single neighbour.
Babies change this. Suddenly you are outside at the same odd hours as other parents. You are at the playground at 7am because your child woke up at 5:30 and you have already exhausted every indoor option. You are walking slow laps around the block at 8pm because movement is the only thing that works for the evening fussiness.
And you keep seeing the same people.
I started with nods. Then one-line exchanges. Then one afternoon a woman with a baby roughly the same age as mine sat down next to me at the void deck and said, very directly, “How old is yours? Mine is four months and I am losing my mind a little.”
That honesty was everything. I did not need small talk. I needed someone to say the real thing first so I could say it back.
We became friends. She introduced me to two other moms on our street. That small group became the most practical support system I had — the people I could text when I needed someone to watch my son for forty minutes, the people who dropped things off when I was sick, the people I could be honest with without worrying about how I came across.
Do not overlook the people who are already physically close to you. Sometimes the village is literally two blocks away.
Telling People What I Actually Needed
This one was harder than finding new friends. This was about the people already in my life.
I had a habit — I think a lot of mothers do — of saying I was fine when I was not. Of insisting I had everything under control because asking for help felt like admitting failure. My husband would ask what he could do and I would say nothing and then feel resentful that he was not doing more. My mother would offer to come and I would say she did not need to and then sit alone feeling lonely.
At some point I got tired of my own performance.
I started being more specific. Not “I’m struggling” in a vague way that nobody knows how to respond to. But: “Can you come on Thursday afternoon so I can sleep for two hours.” “Can you take him for a walk so I can shower and sit quietly for twenty minutes.” “I need you to just listen right now, I don’t need advice.”
Specific requests are so much easier for people to respond to. Most people in your life want to help. They just do not know how unless you tell them.
What I Would Tell A New Mom Who Feels Alone Right Now
The isolation of early motherhood is real and it is not talked about enough. It does not mean something is wrong with you or that you are somehow doing it wrong. It means you are in a genuinely hard season that our culture does not prepare us for very well.
A few things I know now that I did not know then:
Vulnerability is how friendships actually start. The friendships I made that lasted were not built on cheerful small talk. They were built on someone saying the real thing — “I am exhausted and I have no idea what I am doing” — and someone else saying “me too.” You do not have to pretend to be coping well to be likeable. Often the opposite is true.
One person is enough to start. You do not need a group. You do not need a network. You need one person who gets it. Start there.
It takes longer than you expect. Real friendship takes time even when the conditions are good. Do not measure the effort by early results. Show up to the class a few more times. Reply to the WhatsApp message even when you are tired. The connection builds slowly and then, one day, it is just there.
The village is not going to look like you imagined. Mine did not. It was a woman from a fitness class, a stranger from Facebook, a neighbour I had ignored for two years, and my husband finally understanding what I actually needed from him. Not what I had pictured. Exactly what I needed.
You are not supposed to do this alone.
Nobody ever was.
