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.

Spirituality Check

You know that feeling when sometimes things feel so dull, things happen routinely everyday and you feel bored in a way that you yourself cannot understand or explain. When you look at things, you have good family and friends surrounding you but you keep hoping for something better beyond your own control. You are in a foreign land, deserted, estranged and you start hoping you could have a home but still you can never save enough to have one and maybe you can say never.

I am kind of battling that thought and feeling most of the time. Being here in the desert simply doesn't help. Or maybe being here simply doesn't matter at all, but still I admire the American friends I know who are brave enough to go out during the day without their husbands. Somehow living in a desert really made me feel deserted in my own home, alone and bound within the four walls of this small apartment.  I wonder, will it ever make difference if we're not in the desert right now, or I might as well be whining about the negativeness in other places. 

But then,  you still tried almost everything to lift up yourself, you feel uplifted for a while and next  you still find yourself wallowing there with that same feeling that just keeps coming back no matter how you tried to escape it. I really hope I could be as strong as the other good women that I know out there who walks with grace, faith and strong testimony in their lives no matter how difficult things goes and who never get depressed. 

Today, I had conversation with some friends who asked me why testimony of the gospel is not enough to endure it all. When you try to imagine a spirituality chart to evaluate how you are doing, you could either find it ascending or descending but never constant. There are times you feel your spirituality is uplifted, but you cannot stop and have a break from doing the things that keeps your spirituality growing, like reading the scriptures, attending church and temple, or paying tithing. If you stop from doing one or more of the things that nourishes and keeps your spirituality strong, you can never expect to go back in the same level of spirituality you had before you decided to put these good things aside, you know the line descended a little bit or a lot and you need to do things that will nourish and let it grow again. Once you've done the covenants, the most difficult point will arise, that is enduring it all and keeping the chart ascending. 

Maybe if I will be grateful enough I will find more reasons to be happy and spiritually uplifted, or I should be humble enough to accept what is given to me, or if I manage my time wisely to accommodate the arising duties and responsibilities I have with my family I could find more time for my spiritual nourishment.  Or maybe tomorrow, women will be allowed to do more in this desert box and things will lighten up as I try to keep my spiritual progress go up. 

Dressing to Give a Lasting Impression

Sometimes girls forget that what they do, the way they conduct themselves be it at home or in public sends signal as to how people will respect them. Actually it also shows how she respects herself, I will always admire a girl who can keep her standards in dressing modestly regardless of any place or occasion.

What should a girl do to get noticed by a decent and respectable man? A lot! But first she has to decided, in what way does she wants to get noticed? Clearly, dressing immodestly doesn't earn the respect of a man nor does it give a good impression. When a woman dress in a modest and decent manner, she can attract a decent man; on the other way a woman who dress immodestly can expect to attract a man in the same category who may fail to  respect women. 

I believe women can be attractive and look good no matter what their age through the way they dress up. I've known and seen many older women who dress up with glamour and sophistication, they look so decent and respectable with their modest clothing. 

On Discipline

We had a great weekend today! The message and lesson we had today about women's potential and nurturing capabilities has kept me thinking about it until we got home.

My days are made busy and sometimes overwhelming with a very active growing little boy in our home. I actually had a nap today, and I woke up feeling exasperated because I dreamed about my little boy doing some more stunts and what we refer to as "daily disaster". In fact I used to take picture and tried starting a journal blog for my two kids which is often focused on his daily disastrous stunts like messing with the flour on our cupboard, climbing on our dining table to spill the foods or drinks for fun, and I got tired and have given up recording those fun disasters with him. His disasters has turned out to be our amusement as we talk about it at night and look at his face caught in the act for those fun but not so fun to clean messy disasters. 

Sometimes disciplining kids are tricky for me, I often shout out of surprise or desperation and sometimes anger. The truth is I need to develop more patience and gentleness when it comes to reproving them. And I always reason out for my bad temper and I feel bad about it after few minutes which I think is good because at least I could explain to Hevyn my reaction and hope its not too late, nobody really wants to hurt the precious child's heart. I don't want them to be rebellious because of the way they get treated when being disciplined. 

Disciplining our kids is never easy. I think it is more challenging for parents as they learn more valuable virtues while they rear and teach kids. In the end sometimes it is really the parents who should learn more, and what we learn as parents can actually matter more than the small things we want our kids to learn. 

It is always important to seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost in all things we do. The boundaries between being so harsh and reproving kids with sharpness can only be distinguished by how we feel inside us and how we are guided by Holy Ghost as we teach kids the right way. And sometimes we can note that kids learn more with gentleness and patience rather than by punishment or nagging. 

House Encounters

Motherhood can really be rewarding, sometimes frustrating, but most of the time humorous.

Now that I'm on my third trimester, I can't help but sometimes fall asleep on the couch while Heavenne is playing around. But I noticed that her daily adventures in the house is progressing a lot to new level each day- or how should I say that.

Four days ago, while Kenji and I were preparing dinner we noticed how quiet she is playing inside our room. However we never thought of checking what's going on, because we're used to expect the "tornado disaster" which makes it acceptable and normal for us. But I suddenly feel like I need to lie down on the bed for a while, so I got inside the room and noticed nothing different. After a while she came to me on the bed and showed some drawings on a piece of paper. I showed her my appreciation for her talent and gave some applause. She got so excited and told me how she liked to paint also, I said that's good we'll try painting sometimes. Then I thought that was the end of it, but she got more excited and said, "look I already did some paintings there, see? is it beautiful?" while pointing on the opposite wall. To my surprise, she used some lip gloss and lipstick and did some scribbling with it. I almost screamed, but she managed to cover my mouth quickly. Well we got so lucky on this disaster because our chemist knows how to remove stains from lipstick and lip gloss.

Today, I just fell asleep on our couch after having lunch. When I woke up, I was totally surprised to find a little creature with eye shadow of purple and matching nail polish on toe nails and finger nails too. You wouldn't guess, but if she used the lip gloss and lipstick to scribble on the wall, this time she used the permanent marker for her make up and nail polish. Anyway, she greeted me right away when she saw me opened my eye in astonishment, "Isn't it beautiful?" while posing so I can see clearly her work of art. Anyway, that is just the first, I'm still counting. I was chatting with my sister and she's back playing with her toys in the room again. Suddenly she called me and said she'll stay there and just play with her toys, and I said ok. Again after few minutes she came out of the room, dressed in layers of clothes which is not unusual, she sat on the couch and said she's baking cakes for us. Then I said ok again, and she run back on our room, and came back with lots of baby powder mixed with water on her cooking utensil toys- that's it, her very own cake recipe!

I'll still be counting, but this time I'll pay close attention to prevent humorous disasters, the day is not yet over!