I am rolling my own auth and have an updateSession() function in my middleware that checks if I have accessToken cookie if I do fine. If not then it sends a request to my backend to refresh the token (as long as a refresh token cookie is present).

import { cookies } from 'next/headers';
import { jwtDecode } from 'jwt-decode';
import { User } from '@/types/user';
import { env } from '../../config/env';

export function getSession() {
    const accessToken = cookies().get('accessToken')?.value;

    if (!accessToken) return null;

    return jwtDecode<User>(accessToken);
}

export async function updateSession() {
    const accessToken = cookies().get('accessToken')?.value;

    try {
        if (accessToken) return;
        await refreshSession();
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
        throw error;
    }
}

export async function refreshSession() {
    try {
        const response = await fetch(
            `${env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SERVER_ENDPOINT}/api/sessions/refresh`,
            {
                credentials: 'include',
            }
        );

        const data: { accessToken: string } = await response.json();

        return data.accessToken;
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
        return null;
    }
}

I had to change from axios as it did not work in this environment I beleive it's running in the edge due to the middleware? Does this explain why my cookies aren't being send to my node backend?

export async function middleware(request: NextRequest) {
    await updateSession();

    ....rest of my code
}

export const config = {
    matcher: ['/((?!api|_next/static|_next/image|favicon.ico).*)'],
};