My Postpartum Experiences

The thing about depression, some people think it's a choice and it could be consequences of bad choices. Not until you experience it, you'll never really understand how it works. Sometimes even if you have everything around you, you could still be under it's dreadful power. And no matter how happy you are with your family, spiritual or social life you could still be a victim of it.  Postpartum depression is one of the many faces of depression.  I experienced postpartum depression with both of my pregnancies and I'm scared to experience it again. It seemed to me, it got even worse on the second time. When you thought you could handle it better the next time, you can never really say. I don't even know if I could still handle and get out of it if it happens the 3rd time, that's why I'm scared to be pregnant again.

It often attacks me in the wee hours at night. You feel restless in the middle of the night when you should be tired and sleepy. Yet, no matter how tired you make yourself trying to do all things in your power  you still couldn't fall asleep. By then something worse follows as you become more restless, you feel alone and you needed someone to help you in a way that you can't even figure out how, everyone is asleep and soon it will be dawn.  You try to think of the many things you're grateful for to cheer yourself up, but memories goes round and round as if telling you how things are all messed up even if it's really not. You feel mad, you feel self pity, you worry about things that might happen. And sometimes you just feel all those negative feelings but couldn't explain reasons why you feel such. You're ok one time, and you're in your worse in an hour to follow. You feel you're not loved and few minutes you feel overwhelmed with love. One moment you feel you are being neglected and forgotten, and next you feel blessed. You also feel body aches and funny feelings in your body, that makes you think your life might not last that long. It's like being on a seesaw, one time you're way way up and one moment you're way way down. My husband would always wake up trying to console me, and he would spend hours telling me stories or plans which is very comforting enough to bring me to sleep, sometimes he would massage me too so I could fall asleep. These are just some of what a mother experiencing ppd could feel.


I thought that I could handle it more the second time it happened to me, but it got worse and almost out of control. I'm tempted to take hormone meds but decided it wouldn't be good as I'm nursing a little boy. I get scared being alone with the kids, I want to just sit down and be hugged by my husband. There are times that I couldn't stop crying and my daughter who is only 3 years old would hug me, and sing primary songs because somehow it calms me from crying too much. She would wipe my tears and tell me to cheer up, and I feel sad right then because she has to see me in such a way but grateful too because of her love and how she's handling it. Right now, it doesn't bother me so often as it was 14 months ago, but when my period gets near then my hormones gets rattled again, one day I'm too happy and cheerful the other day I'll be depressed. I chart the dates when I feel my emotions are heightened, I let my husband know so he will understand and help me go through it and keep me busy with shopping or do other things that will pave more way to for me to be happy rather than sad. We go out, we shop for fun, we do more fun things with our family. If I get overly occupied with one thing it doesn't do me good too, balance is needed I guess, you need to establish time for yourself and time with your love ones. I still don't understand how it works, and I'm not yet an expert on solving postpartum depression. But I'm trying to understand the patterns, and talking to my partner helps a lot. I feel depressed going to the hospital too, because it makes me feel I'm terribly sick and think and worry of things about health or paranoid maybe. I want to feel healthy, and I want to feel loved- these two helped mainly to keep me sane, and not worry about the future too much.

I really never thought I want to share this here, I want it to be more of a private matter to our family. But today, I learned from my husband how his friend's wife is suffering from it. I don't know what to say, or how I could help her since she's also miles away from me. But I hope she'll be fine. There are lots of women out there who suffers the same for sure. Too bad, not everyone is aware of this thing or how it could be prevented much more how to deal with it. I hope women will be educated on this too as part of reproductive health.  I haven't learned about it  until I experienced it when Hevyn is few months old.

Every girl is different, we all have different worries, and different things that will make us happy. Most of all, we want help to come from the person we love most, not professional strangers. Comfort, love, help in many forms specially adjusting to new home situation of having a new baby is very helpful too. The feeling of being a mother is overwhelming, unexplainable and divine, these feelings makes us aware of our new responsibility and our motherly love tells us we don't want to fail our beloved child. Knowing we are not alone in bring up a child can give lots of comfort and peace which may mean a lot to a new mother.