A Letter to Myself in One of the Hardest Seasons of My Life

February 8, 2025 Shyla Yoder

Dear Self,

Giving birth to your first baby in July of 2021, at age 32 will usher you into one of the longest, most trying seasons of your life. You do not want this to be one of the most trying seasons of your life; you want it to be the start of the life you dreamed of. It will be. You just have some weeds to clear out before the purity of what you long for can be experienced at its full capacity. The Father, out of his goodness, wants this for you.

You will take your challenges as failures. The revealing of shame is part of the purification process. The things you are most afraid of happening, will happen. You will search for a way out for a long time, clawing and scraping at times, until you realize your freedom lies in finding God’s goodness within your fears. When you realize that you survived and God never let you succumb to it - fear is not avoided it’s removed. Vanished. You will thank the Father for this. You would have settled for being rescued immediately from your fear but now you do not need to fear the future. A gift you never dreamed of asking for.

This will include a laundry list of skills: How to recover from a C-section, how to nurse an impatient baby, how to support your hormones and nervous system when they are struggling (anxiety and depression), how to soothe a fussy baby, how to understand the impermanence of dependent babies and sleepless nights, how to restore your digestive system, how to let go of fear and trust the Father, how to rebuild your mindset about yourself after these challenging years.

With one thing happening after another strewn out over years, you will feel broken; your nervous system worn out. You think you might have recovered and then discover you’re still ridden with fear. The Father is giving no shortcuts. You will become more resilient when once this word was far from anything you’d describe yourself as. You will wear this badge of resilience after feeling the weakest you have in your life.

You will face the hole in your heart of not being taken care of. Motherhood and health struggles will bring this out in you in a deep way. You find yourself feeling alone not only to take care of your baby but to take care of yourself and the grief of this loss will be felt in this time. Would this hole not have been there, you may have had the same experiences and handled them differently however, you are now adept at seeing those in need. You will support other young mothers in ways that would’ve ministered to you. It will bring joy and healing to you. It will become a ministry for you.

You will gain confidence in yourself as a mother and a wonderful, warm coat of experience that will shelter you from the cold chill of the unknown. With every soothing of your child’s young nervous system, yours will be retrained.

You will LOVE motherhood. Especially the toddler years. Your little boy will become your best buddy. You will find joy and rest in being with him and cuddling him close. You will finally find the rhythms of life that you always longed for… a day started by little pattering feet and reading a book together, cooking meals for the two of you and sharing each one together, toting him along in the wrap as a baby on daily walks and garden strolls and visits to friends. You will answer a million curious questions while you do your work and try to include him into the cookie dough stirring; sharing your love of sweet and crunchy things. You will take breaks to play and color and explore outside. Your child will color all the things that you love doing at home: gardening, canning, baking, homesteading. He will be apart of it.

He is your first priority and it will be a continual lesson to put him there in front of your other work. When he came into this world he quickly demanded this attention and your brain fought pretty hard to claim some of it back. It was rapid and merciless. But you have adapted. This is your new normal and you have realized that it has made your life better. Increasingly better. It’s created wonderful routines that help you to be even more productive than you were before, like getting up promptly every day, having a set time for devotions and showers (nap time), demanding that you sit down and eat a nourishing meal regularly and make the most of the time you have to work when you have it.

Motherhood has softened your heart to the patience and love the Lord has toward you. Every time your child requires selfless love and you press into the Lord the find it, you are ministered to. You realize how much you need the Lord.

In the midst of physical pain, you will find a miraculous joy that is accessible daily, no matter how you’re feeling. This will remove the fear and change everything.

You will realize that you are not in control and be glad. Though you claw for it at first, your trust in the Lord grows and you realize that he is truly over ALL THINGS. Physical, mental, and medical. He can help. He does know enough. You do not have to find the solution yourself, ruthlessly searching or even in the right doctor. You must only relay your smallest anxiety to him and trust him with it. He will lead you to the right solution, every time.

“In that case why should I have anxiety? It is not my business to think about myself. It is my business to think about God. It is for God to think about me.”

— Simone Weil

“I don’t know about tomorrow,
it may bring me poverty;
but the One who feeds the sparrow,
is the one who stands by me.”

— “I Know Who Holds the Sparrow”, Ira F. Stanhill, Civilla D. Martin

Song Link: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

“Fear arises when we imagine everything depends on us.”

— Elisabeth Elliot

“And the Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.”

— Isaiah 58:11-12

You will become like a little child in your Father’s hands, trusting him implicitly for each worry that passes your mind. You’ll submit it to him and go on with the joy of living. You will find much joy in living. Again, you will.

You will share this joy with others that He may be known.

I started off this letter with the brainstorm of answering each of the things that I struggled with in postpartum with experience and a solution but I let the Spirit lead instead.

And I realize that it was not about whether or not I took anti-depressants or found natural solutions, or how I learned to nurse or care for a fussy baby or found answers for my health problems—(though the Lord gave me solutions for all those things)—It was about fear. It was fear that made each of those things STING; that made the pain miserable, and made the anxiety unbearable. And it was trust in the Lord that removed it. Trust removed the sting. It gave me HOPE. Resilience. Endurance. Joy. It gave me life.

No my story is not about postpartum depression or health issues. My story is about Trusting my Father. It’s about HIM. It will always be about Him. Christ Jesus is the answer.

Worship to lead you into a time of ministry: https://youtu.be/_fY3l9AKPa0?si=Ws0ssbDIj7k0VAoc

Song Link: Touch of Heaven, David Funk

“All I want is just to know your heart and will you keep me here until we’re one.

I just want you, nothing else, nothing will do.”

— "Touch of Heaven" David Funk, Bethel Music

Related Posts:
My Experience with Postpartum Depression Part I, Part II, Part III

My Experience With Postpartum Depression | Part III

January 26, 2025 Shyla Yoder

I am currently three and a half years postbirth from my experience with postpartum depression and am sharing my journey in three parts as I journaled about it along the way. See the third and final part below.

See Part One Here
See Part Two Here

Things slowly got better after that first day but it was still a rocky path after that. I battled feeling alone and bouts of intense anxiety for several weeks. I cried easily. Joanna rocked and sang to Alex for hours that week and her sweet demeanor cheered me up. Friends of mine surrounded me, popping in every day to check in and keep me company. Alex was still a very fussy baby, not easily consoled by me, but even less by others. Talking about it helped but too much kept me in a dark place. I longed for distraction; happy moments. I got connected with a counselor and others who had experience with postpartum depression and that was so encouraging. The feelings associated with this sickness are wrought with shame, and not many people talk about it. I wanted someone else to take care of my baby, and that was a hard thing to confess. It did not feel right. Matching that feeling was guilt that I shouldn’t allow someone else to take care of my baby; it was my job.

Wayne has a large family, he is the youngest of eight, with lots of nieces and nephews who are grown. They offered to send someone else after Joanna went home and his sister Susie, who had her own kids even offered to come. Her youngest was 11 and she felt he was grown enough that she could get away to help me. I longed for a mother to be here with me to help me know what to do and troubleshoot all the questions I had. So, I took her up on her offer.

That week was incredibly healing. Susie is a deeply loving person, helpful, and easygoing. Like all the Yoder’s, she invited laughter. She slept at Matt’s, Wayne’s nephew who lives beside us so that Wayne and I could have a little time together in the evenings. She would come over early in the morning around four to five am after Alex’s last night-feed and take him if he cried so I could get an uninterrupted two hours of sleep before he was hungry again. Those morning rescues became a daily solace for me, a guaranteed stretch of sleep that I did not have to be on call. She brought her sewing machine along to make dresses for her teenage girls and filled the house with its humming. She quietly cooked and cleaned, put away food from my garden for me, canned green beans, and even made bouquets, all while tending to me and Alex and encouraging me as a new mom. She was balm for my soul.

I still felt anxious quite often. I would ask her to come sit with me while I nursed and cried, wondering what I’d do without her.

She helped Alex to start taking his pacifier and showed me some wonderful tools for soothing him, like the cradle hold, tucking his arm behind mine to keep the pacifier in against me, and helped me find a way to make him comfortable in the wrap, which became an invaluable tool I still use to this day!

When she left I did cry. She and Wayne had to leave quickly when they got the call from her driver and suddenly I felt incredibly alone and incapable all over again. I felt like a failure at that moment but what we didn’t know was in another two weeks I would feel nearly back to myself again. At that moment though, I was not yet ready to be alone. I was 6 weeks postpartum. Though I wanted to be strong, Wayne insisted we find help for me during the day when he wasn’t there until these feelings subsided. I am so thankful for that.

We found Kendra. My dear Kendra. A young woman, with a love for babies, who came into our lives and hasn’t left since. By the time we found her, I felt nearly back to myself again and Alex and I had established some routines to our day to make it much more manageable. We decided to have her come just a few days a week from seven to noon. Although I was feeling much more rested at that point, she allowed me to get a shower and start exercising. She also helped me lay sleep foundations for Alex. He had taken naps alone in his bassinet already, but not with much rhythm or length. She happened to have experience with the sleep structure I had studied and was invaluable in helping me! Establishing good sleep was something I wanted to do from the start and worried about when I had anxiety. Slowly, over the coming months, we helped him fall asleep independently and that was a huge help in giving me the time and space I needed to heal.

I slowly returned to myself and found my energy and joy again. Every time I assessed where we were I felt better and better. I began falling in love with my baby. Life felt manageable and I could say that I truly loved my new job. There were still times when I felt tired, frustrated, and irritable if he had a night of fighting sleep, but it felt like a normal response to me and I’d feel refreshed in the morning. A new day has a way of doing that.

Just recently in the past two months, Alex has begun becoming aware of when there is distance between us and is visibly comforted by my embrace and presence; something that wasn’t apparent in his newborn days when I was trying to figure out how to comfort him. I have leaned into playing this role of mama. Attachment has formed between us, in the most beautiful way. I love him dearly. I love being his mama. I realize that the demands of infanthood will not last forever and am leaning into the closeness that is required in it. I thank the Lord for this.

Some of the sweet things I treasure is the look he gives me after a day out with people and we are all alone again; a huge smile and sigh of relief like he’s saying, “hey, it’s just us again,” that I am the only person that can make him belly-laugh right now and the way he puts both hands on my face to give me a slobbery kiss.

Since returning to myself I have had a handful of anxious moments that felt similar to the postpartum ones, usually during my menstrual cycle. I always returned to myself the next day though and felt like I had a healthy perspective on them though.

I had begun a natural mood-boosting supplement along with the SSRI medication that has ashwagandha and magnesium (also, GABA & 5-HTP) in it the day after Wayne’s sister Susie left. The days and weeks following that are when I felt a significant change in my mood and energy. I don’t know if it was the same timing as the medication kicking in, but I attribute a lot of my recovery to it. I even told Wayne, that I feel more than 100% back to myself; more joyful than usual.

February 30, 2022 | 7 Months Postpartum
At 7 months postpartum, I am in the process of weaning off of my SSRI medication. With my midwife’s guidance, we are opting to do it very slowly over a 2-1/2 months.

April 7, 2022 | 8 Months Postpartum
I have finished my weaning process from my medication and can call it a blessing that I felt next to no symptoms.

July, 2022 | 9 Months Postpartum
I have been off of SSRI medication for two months and have had a few rises of anxiety, namely when Alex started getting distracted while feeding and we started feeding less regularly. I got nervous that he wasn’t eating enough and that it might affect his sleep and then began struggling with let-downs. (I know now that this behavior is normal for babies at this age). I ended up weaning him around 11 months old in response to the stress it was causing me. After this, I started eating more clean and with time and the belief and support of Wayne my anxiety subsided.

March 23, 2024 | 2-1/2 Years Postpartum
I have continued without my SSRI and also stopped taking my natural mood-boosting supplements as well and have felt well mentally since! Kendra started coming just one morning a week when Alex was a year old and stopped helping us when he was one and a half. Even with only that amount of help, I was nervous about the transition. However, each time, Alex and I found a good routine, things were manageable and I felt more than capable! It was empowering.

I am in a wonderful stage with Alex and motherhood now and want to encourage new mothers that they can do it and it WILL get better! I sleep great, I can work independently while Alex plays, have time for myself and our marriage, and feel well. Not everything is perfect of course, parenting has challenges at every stage, but I can look to the future with confidence and joy. I’d like to give it a try next time without SSRI drugs and see, with the perspective that I have and lifestyle habits, if I can get through it. I am thankful that it helped me to get to where I am now though. That was the journey the Lord had for me. I see now how, even to a healthy person, such a change is hard for the brain to accept. If we can take one moment at a time, continually speak the truth to ourselves, and see the good in the moment we’re in while looking at its impermanence, anything is possible.

My Experience With Postpartum Depression Part I
My Experience with Postpartum Depression Part II

Cherished Photos by my dear friend: Jenna L. Richman Photography

My Experience With Postpartum Depression Part II

January 25, 2025 Shyla Yoder

I am currently three and a half years postbirth from my experience with postpartum depression and am sharing my journey in three parts as I journaled about it along the way. See the second part below.

See Part One Here

Did I just not love the newborn stage like some women do or was my baby more difficult than most? I felt ashamed of most of these thoughts but also desperate to be rescued.

That afternoon, after texting my friend, I got an idea. Alex, at that stage, would fall asleep instantly in the car seat on a drive and stay asleep for a couple of hours afterward. I hadn’t ventured out on my own with him yet, but I fed him, quickly packed us up, and got in the car. We went to a coffee shop just down the road, I got a drink and we sat outside. He slept in the car seat beside me peacefully, something I hardly ever got to enjoy, the beauty of a sleeping baby while hands-free, and I brought my journal and wrote. It helped me so much to get some feelings processed and suddenly I felt like I could do this!

The next day though, I felt down; anxious and stressed. Why? I can’t remember. It was something about him not sleeping well without being in my arms; crying and not taking the pacifier. Oh, and I was tired. I remember Wayne coming home and asking him if we could please take a drive together. I longed to not feel solely responsible for the baby; to not be alone with him. If someone else was there, even if he was crying, I felt better. I remember we put a game plan together on that drive. I tried to pull myself together; trying to be strong while I explained to Wayne how I felt. I decided I would take Alex and myself to get chiropractic adjustments the next day, even though going out with him and getting somewhere on time felt huge. I would get a massage to help release excess hormones that were trying to exit my system. Wayne drove me to my massage therapist (a friend of ours) while we were on that drive. He dropped me off and drove Alex around in the car. It was the first time I was away from him. Though strange, it felt wonderful.

We had our adjustments the next day and it was the most wonderful day. Alex was happy and I felt so good. The next evening though, sitting in the garden waiting on Wayne to get done with work, felt like an eternity. Alex wasn’t even that fussy, but I felt incapable of being alone with him. If he was sleeping, I would worry about when he’d wake up because I felt like I didn’t know what to do with him. My hormones seemed to take over. I felt sad. I felt lonely… and neglected (not because of lack of support, but something I deal with from time to time). When Wayne came around the fence to greet us with a smile, the beautiful way he does when his whole face lights up, I was so sad that I couldn’t be happy for him. Alex was sleeping peacefully in a bassinet in the garden but I walked up to Wayne with tears in my eyes, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t feel capable.” My brain was foggy and it seemed to be betraying me. I looked at him and said, like a confession, “I think this may be more than the baby blues.” That was the first either of us acknowledged it.

Wayne’s parents, sister, and 14-year-old niece arrived that night from Ohio to stay the weekend with us and meet the baby. I felt instantly comforted by their presence. They understood what it was like after having a baby and offered such encouragement. They took Alex anytime I wasn’t feeding him and let me sleep and have a break. I still felt very anxious, guilty, and sad. I could only think of what I would do when they left. I tried to take naps with the luxury of their help, but I did not want to sleep in the bedroom with him. It caused me so much anxiety to even be near him. This is something I look back on with introspection. So, I would sleep on the couch in daylight with people buzzing around me and thoughts buzzing in my head. I was desperate for naps and showers in those days, and there never seemed to be enough time for both. I confessed to my friend later about my feelings, that I would look at people in public and think how rested and free they seemed and instantly feel bitter. Bitter that they could take a nap whenever they wanted, that they had smiles on their faces and generally had a life they felt capable of living. Wow. I felt trapped by this new tiny human in my life. This was not how I imagined it; this dream I’d had since I could hold a baby doll. Molly Millwood in her book To Have & To Hold, Motherhood, Marriage & The Modern Dilemma, talks about this misunderstanding we have of impermanence as new moms. I somehow felt like this stage would never end and I would never get enough sleep ever again.

I broke down Sunday afternoon in a bedroom alone while Wayne’s family was packing up to go home. I was trying to take a nap but felt so anxious and scared that I started to panic. I found Wayne, started sobbing, and with fear in my eyes, I asked, “Will we get through this?” and as if I could not navigate another minute, I told him, “I need help.”

Wayne’s niece, instead of going home with the rest of the family, offered to stay with us for the week and help. I needed someone with me, we both knew that. Joanna rode home with us after his family left the cabin they were staying in and Wayne went up to the barn and called my midwife. When things get serious in life like this, he becomes the most gentle, hands-on support. I’m amazed at his ability to emotionally tune in. He does this very rationally. Looking back, I’m amazed at his ability to recognize the signs of what was going on and reach out for help. I owe a lot of it to our birth classes that talked about the possibilities of postpartum depression and how it differs from the baby blues, but also his attunement to me. My midwife, who had spent the last 9 months monitoring me, assessed that what I was dealing with was serious. She recommended that I go on medication for depression. She told Wayne we caught it early and could hopefully wean off quickly as well. So that evening, deciding together, I started taking medication.

For some reason, though I considered the possibility of getting postpartum depression, I did not consider the possibility of going on medication. I don’t know why… my mom took medication for depression at one point. I guess I figured this type would be dealt with another way. So, when it came to this moment, when I was so far buried under incapability and had to make this decision, I did not feel prepared. My fear and emotional state felt dire enough that natural methods, which I would later learn much more about, did not seem like they would cut it. I did not know if I could make it another day like this.

SSRI drugs take time to kick in; 1-2 weeks until fully effective. At the beginning, things tend to get worse before they get better. The first day on medication was the hardest, I broke down in tears to my neighbor who stopped in, pleading with her for help because “I didn’t know what to do.” I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. She came back and stayed with my niece and me for nearly the whole week as well.

I battled pretty hard with the idea of being on medication, as it had sore associations for me. That added to my load. I called my Dad in tears, feeling so ashamed.