No.1: In My Blue Era 💙🩵
No.1: In My Blue Era 💙🩵
PPD vlog, creme brulee coffee and soft girl summer
In this newsletter…
🌙 Baby Boy’s 1st Birthday
🎧 Listening Now
💙 4 Signs: How I Knew It Was Postpartum Depression (PPD)
🎬 Vlog — PPD Recovery, New Routines + Spring Home Organization
☕️ Crème Brûlée Coffee Recipe
🌸 Soft Girl Summer
The first birthday comes quickly.
And this time, with my boy, I blinked and we were lighting the candle.
In a dimly lit kitchen, with the people who love him most, we celebrated his birth singing Happy Birthday around the same time he was born, 9:23 pm.
The festivities of the day seemed to give him a touch of sensory sensitivity and he started crying when we clapped. Having anticipated this possibility, as our family often sings twice, we sang the second time in a whisper. He approved.
In contrast to our normal days at home, we spent most of his birthday in the city, visiting the Museum of Nature and Science. Because the eclipse would be the upcoming Monday, the building was packed to the brim with international tourists, die-hard astronomy aficionados, their grandmas and their second cousins — incredibly overstimulating.
Making the plans, I thought a trip to the museum was perfect because they have an astronomy floor and so many other fantastic exhibits. What’s more? It aligned with my eclipse birthday theme for him. I was a bit sad because I realized, while weaving between people and floors and T-rex skeletons, that we both would have preferred a much quieter experience.
Because he arrived so late in the evening and was taken to the NICU shortly after birth, we hardly spent any quality time together on the day of record.
It wasn’t until 11 AM the next day that he was finally able to stay in my arms for more than a few minutes. For this reason, I also consider this his birthday — our first real day together Earth-side.
The next morning, on his Earth Day, we took a pleasant ride away from the city and spent the day walking about the countryside, roaming a tree-lined disc golf course nestled by a lake. It was beautiful and wonderful and calm.
🎧 Tuning In
Album: Deeper Well
Artist: Kacey Musgraves
My Take — The record is a reflection of a more mature, almost philosophical new version of herself. Kacey made some changes in her personal life and sings about leaving behind old habits, prioritizing peace, and looking forward to the future. Very different from her previous works, her transformative sound reflects her inner growth and is symbolic of crossing the threshold from girlhood into womanhood.
Favorite Tracks — #2 Deeper Well and #12 Heaven Is.
Feature
4 Signs — How I Realized It Was Postpartum Depression (PPD)
The first birthday blues came with both of my babies.
With my daughter, I experienced them leading up to the big day. The second time, with my son, they came a few days after the birthday celebration.
These joyful events mark incredible milestones and are certainly something to be happy about but sometimes, in conflict to everything going on around us, we find ourselves feeling sad, or anxious, even distraught.
In additional to hormone changes, I also attribute the phenomenon to our brain’s way of dealing with “the end” of something… the good-bye.
— birth means the end of pregnancy, the woman you were and the life you had before. A birthday means the newborn stage and a lot of those firsts have now passed and will only ever become cherished memories.
In my experience, being able to attribute your feelings to distinct events, be they joyful or sorrowful, is one of the ways that might help identify your feelings as possibly “the blues.”
In contrast, if these sad feelings persist beyond a few weeks, you don’t really know where they’re coming from or why, and/or you find they become more intense with time, you may be experiencing postpartum depression.
Around 9-10 months postpartum, I began to feel “off”, like I wasn’t myself as much —I had less patience, more prone to irritability. If the day was difficult for one reason or another I was consumed by the negative feelings surrounding the events of the day; guilt, shame, anger, self-doubt, despair, hopelessness… heavy, heavy feelings.
It was impossible to let go or move past them, sometimes for days.
I asked myself many times why am I feeling like this?
These feelings were overwhelmingly intense and difficult to process. Some were new to me and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. The fact that I was even feeling them confused me.
After some reading, it became evident that I was most likely experiencing late-onset postpartum depression, a condition that occurs around 9-10 months postpartum and affects about 7% of mothers.
In addition to research, here are 4 signs that helped me realize that I was experiencing PPD;
Emotional Intensity
I began to feel less patient, quick to annoyance and anger over things that I used to be able to manage/solve/fix. If something happened, however small, I couldn’t handle it and would become consumed by guilt, anger, sadness, shame.
I didn’t understand why I was overreacting. I couldn’t find something drastically different about our circumstances that would trigger feelings of hopelessness and despair.
I could not find the joy in doing the things I normally loved like taking daily walks, baking, gardening, or filming. I felt like I was on autopilot.
As a person with chronic baby fever, for the first time in 3 years, I felt that adding another baby into our lives was too much right now. I needed to wait.
Hormone & Physical Changes
I began experiencing pain and cramping outside of normal range, nowhere near my expected ovulation or period, so I decided to track early with LH test strips.
The test strips revealed that my hormones were going through a series of false starts — spiking but never quite hitting the threshold to trigger ovulation, then, coming back down and going back up again repeatedly over several weeks.
Resulted in a 50+ day anovulatory (no ovulation) cycle.
The next cycle resulted in early ovulation on CD 11 with an unsurprisingly short luteal phase resulting in another abnormal cycle — <21 days.
Graph shows 4 regular cycles with positive (+) LH peak. January cycle (dark red line) negative (-) for LH peak with abnormal readings. 51-day cycle. Anovulatory.
Sleep deprivation due to frequent night wakings and short/missed naps during the day due to a teething baby seeking comfort and relief at the breast
This has also let to sore, cracked nipples, just like the newborn days.
As luck would have it, my baby is teething again! His top lateral incisors are pushing through and there’s something a bit strange happening with my current cycle as well ( check it out in the vlog 🎬 )! Our bodies are wild.
Postpartum Depression Screening
I remembered that survey they have you fill out at the pediatrician’s office during your first year postpartum to screen you for depressive symptoms… I realized my true answers would be different this time.
Talking to Someone
Survey results from IG Story: Did you experience PPD? — 78% Yes
Sharing my early experiences with you on IG, even though I didn’t realize what was happening, was incredibly helpful. I felt that someone understood me and I also got a bit of guidance from an experienced, breastfeeding mother that identified the likely cause for triggering the symptoms.
Through it all, the hardest part for me was the self-doubt. It felt like I spent every day feeling like I was not a good mom but I know now that this was a lie. That was the hormones talking.
I am a good mom. You are a good mom.
The words, “being strong for my kids” have taken on a whole new meaning for me because of this experience.
To “be strong” for your kids can mean a lot of different things;
confiding in a trusted friend or experienced group about your struggles
asking for help with the kids and/or around the house
learning more about your symptoms & stage of motherhood/babyhood
talking to a professional, getting medication
supplementing with formula, reduced breastfeeding, weaning
releasing negativity — habits, mindsets, people, apps, etc
taking time off work, choosing rest
putting on the brave face
It’s going to look different for all of us. Just know that it’s okay to need more support sometimes. It doesn’t mean you’re any less of a mother. It just means that you’re human. And biology is weird.
I am happy to report that now, 4 months after the onset of symptoms, I am feeling much better and spending my time focused on rest and healing.
Vlog
🎬 PPD Recovery, New Routines, Spring Home Organization
Recipe
☕️ Crème Brûlée Latte
My current obsession.
Sitting in the pantry, I found a can of sweetened condensed milk from my failed flan experiment. Perfection! I had just run out of heavy cream and needed a little something extra and new to add to my usual blend.
My taste in coffee runs decadent.
My husband calls it desert coffee. I call it necessary.
1 cup - steamed milk
2 oz - espresso
1 tbspn - sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tspn - salted butter
Splash of vanilla extract
Optional - sprinkle of cinnamon
No espresso? No problem! Sub 1 cup of coffee + 2 - 4 oz of milk, depending on your preference for cream, and have yourself a Crème Brûlée Cafe Au Lait.
🌸 Soft Girl Summer
The vibe this summer is… indulgence.
Here are a few of my new habits and forthcoming plans to maximize rest and rejuvenation this season.
Task Blocking — simplifying my to-do list by designating different parts of the day for different tasks. For example, I only complete housework in the afternoon.
Outdoor Living — “Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.” A Charlotte Mason quote I’ve taken to heart. (Home Education Vol. 1, part II)
Farewell Social Media — gone are my days of scrolling, posting, seeing endless ads and things I never needed to know. It feels like I left a cult… liberating.
Planning a Trip — taking extended time off work and traveling to a beautiful nature preserve with the Boo’s. It’s been on my “must-see” list for 6 years!
Korean Spa — the lava rock zen room has been calling my name but I haven’t yet left Baby Boy for more than 20 min since his birth! I hope to get a chance to reset my aura for an hour or two and have a piping hot bowl of Yukgaejang (육개장).
New Do — my hair has always been a lot to handle, mostly because it takes so much time, but this summer I’m going to experiment and find a style that is low maintenance but that I also love.
Side Quests — playing video games was one of my favorite hobbies before having babies. I’ve started playing Zelda again at night. Right now, I’m working through Breath of the Wild and hoping to finish it around August.
Capsule Wardrobe — my closet is full of clothes mailed to me by my mother. Mostly comfy, mostly frumpy and it’s time for a change. My goal is to whittle it down to a few quality dresses and soft, interchangeable sets.
Coming Soon
The Early Years: Late Spring
Nature study inspo, living book recommendations, tutorials and activity ideas for you and your little ones themed around the season plus reflections on Charlotte Mason teachings and principles for early years.
Thank you for sharing a little bit of your past weeks 🥰 Love this format ❤️ Always inspiring me to do new things
I loved every piece of this 🤍 thank you for sharing