Getting Started

Sometimes it really does take hitting rock bottom to see that you need a change. That is what the past few months have felt like for me - rock bottom.

In May of 2025, I gave birth to my son. Before he was born, we had found out that he had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and would need multiple heart surgeries to survive and very close monitoring in the first months of his life. It was devastating news. He had a heart surgery at one day old and spent his first 3 weeks in hospital recovering while I recovered, as best as I could, from pregnancy and child birth.

Bringing him home filled me with anxiety. Not only was I taking care of a baby for the first time, I was also monitoring his oxygen saturations, keeping track of his medication schedule, and re-inserting his NG feeding tube every time he yanked it out (he did this daily for a while). Me and my husband were exhausted and the support network that we thought we had didn’t come through for us in the way that we needed. Everyone just wanted to come to see the baby but didn’t want to learn what it really took to take care of him. We were on our own.

The next few months were even more anxiety producing as our son had to be readmitted to hospital five additional times to treat problems that were causing his oxygen levels to drop. Every time I turned on his oxygen monitor the anxiety would start to build up as I wondered if this routine check would lead to an ambulance call. The constant visits and stays and at the children’s hospital we draining emotionally and physically. I can’t even count how many times a nurse would walk into the room to find me crying during one of his admissions. This hospital was also a two to three hour drive away from our home so it felt very isolating to be away from my husband and our families during some of my most difficult days.

With all of this chaos in my life as well as just the normal adjustment of being a new mother, I am feeling like I have been completely neglected. I’m getting very little sleep, my diet is almost completely consisting of convenience foods and I very rarely leave the house. I can’t even remember the last time I had any substantial amount of physical activity and my mental health has been struggling. I really struggle to find things to be hopeful about when I have been living in a state of anxiety and chaos for so long.

So I’m making a change; or many small changes rather. I am starting a journey to feel well again and to figure out what wellness means to me because I truly believe it is different for everyone. Each week, I aim to make one small change to get myself one step closer to being well. I’ll write about what works for me and what doesn’t and maybe