To me, that story was a distress call that warranted immediate intervention. Though I don't know Ashley that well, I felt an instant kinship with her when I heard of her baby woes, as I remember well those early days with my own daughter Quinn. As soon as I found out Ashley was struggling, I demanded that Norm give me their phone number and called her right away.

I didn't waste a second on small talk and got right to the point when Ashley answered. "Norm just talked to Marco and said you were having trouble. What's going on?" Considering we'd only socialized together a few assorted times, Ashley didn't seem at all bothered by my call and launched right into the details. She was baffled as to why her one-month-old, who according to the books should be sleeping sixteen hours a day, never slept and constantly wanted to eat. The scenario was so familiar it instantly transported me back to Quinn's first few weeks of life when she'd nurse and nurse until I was just sure there couldn't be a drop of milk left. Trapped in the house with a baby who insisted on monopolizing my day, I, too, wondered why the books say newborns sleep all the time and only need to eat every four hours. Either the books were wrong or my baby had neglected to study up.

I remember placing a series of panicky phone calls to all the women I knew who'd just had babies. Both of my sisters had been pregnant along with me, one giving birth a mere ten days before I did. Also, two of my best friends had had their second babies just before I had Quinn. Consequently, I had no shortage of mom brains available for the picking. Upon hearing my rant about 24/7 breastfeeding, they all had come to the same conclusion: It was a growth spurt.

"It could be a growth spurt," I told Ashley, though I was certainly no lactation consultant. All I had was my own experience and the advice of my sisters and friends, but their diagnosis had been correct. Quinn eventually returned to an intermittent eating schedule and resumed napping, and I was able regain my sanity for the time being.

I assured Ashley that Davis would eventually return to some sort of manageable eating and sleeping pattern, although I'm not sure that's exactly helpful to someone who's in the middle of a weeklong nurse-a-thon. More than anything, I just wanted to reassure her that, despite what it felt like, she really was doing a good job. That's what I wanted to hear when I had my own issues with growth spurts, nap-free days, and colic.

"It's harder than you thought it'd be, isn't it?" I asked her. "It's lonely and frustrating and sometimes you wonder why you thought having a baby was a good idea at all, right?"

Silence. Then a sigh. "But I love him to death! I wouldn't trade him for anything!" Ashley insisted, as we all do when we're wracked with guilt over not loving every second of mothering our thoroughly unreasonable but utterly gorgeous infants.

"Of course, but it's normal not to like being a mom sometimes, especially in the beginning when they need so much and you feel like it all falls on you."

We continued discussing all the lowest points of early parenting, the dark side of being a novice mom, the downside you're even ashamed to admit to yourself. When venting with another mother, your love for your child goes without saying, so it's easier to let down your guard and admit that while your child is the light of your life, you'd really prefer if your little light would turn off occasionally and let you do, say, one thing other than caring for her for five consecutive minutes a day. I remember that it was exactly these sorts of candid conversations with my friends and sisters that kept me afloat in those ugly, early days.

The truth is that we were never meant to do this alone. If we were having babies a hundred years ago, we'd likely be living among cousins, sisters, aunts, and mothers, all available to coach us through those first few crazy months. We wouldn't be left alone, each of us isolated in our own suburban houses, to figure it all out with no support other than our equally overwhelmed and sleep-deprived husbands.

I'm not saying that I wish I were living in the past, since women obviously have advantages today that they didn't have a century ago. Women of my generation have been told they could do and be anything they wanted. We were encouraged to get degrees, to choose careers, to live where we wanted, and to marry whomever we wanted, at whatever age we wanted. We became professionals and earned the respect of our peers through our superior job performances. We're task-oriented, success-mongers, and all of that's just great—until you put us in a house for 24 hours a day with a baby who really couldn't care less about our curriculum vitae. For many of us, an infant is the first project we can't manage, and we're too proud to ask for help. With all the advances women have made, we've unfortunately sacrificed community for independence. By failing to connect with the women in our lives, we truly do ourselves a disservice. We were never meant to do this alone.

We may not have our extended family all living on the same street anymore (nor would we want to, in many cases!), but we do have support available to us, even if it's only by phone and email. New moms shouldn't hesitate to reach out to the "been there done that" mothers who, while they might not have all the answers, do provide an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on. And we, the mothers who've survived the sleep wars, the colic wars, and the feeding wars, need to reach out to the new moms we know, even if it's just to drop off a lasagna or shoot off an encouraging email.

I have no idea if my phone call helped Ashley feel any better or not. I'm sure she's got a slew of friends and family who can be of way more help than I could, but I cannot bear the thought of any first-time mother left alone to puzzle it out, calling into question her own parenting abilities, when she's likely just needing someone to tell her she's doing a good job. What she and all new mothers need to know is that we're all just bumbling along, figuring it out as we go, and there's absolutely no reason to bumble alone.

Jamie Odeneal is a former high school ESL teacher who is now a stay-at-home mom trying to squeeze in a writing career during her daughter's naps. Her personal essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Prima Baby magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The MultiCultural Review. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Norm and their daughter Quinn.