Ethel Yap found herself in the emergency room only four days after giving birth to her brother in September 2020.
” I had chest tightness. I felt like I couldn’t swallow. I had brain beats. My brain would prick itself up sober every time I attempted to fall off. The feeling was nearly of, as you’re falling sleep, your body forgets how to breathe, and it sorely wakes itself up to say,’ breath, breathe, breathe’, if no, you’re going to die.
” Every day my brain jerked itself alive, I was gasping for breath, like I was suffocating, choking, breathing in waters,” said the 36-year-old singer-songwriter and theater artist.
It was so awful that physicians discovered her and made the diagnosis that she might have heart failure.
My physical manifestations were truly consistent with this heart condition known as peripartum cardiomyopathy, which recently postpartum mothers can abruptly develop, have a heart attack, and pass away, Yap told CNA Women.
The new mom was isolated from her kid, husband, and family because the crisis was still continued and because some of her symptoms matched COVID-19.
That, while fighting for mouth and rest, she continued to motor breast milk, which her spouse shuttled back regularly for their infant.
Throughout, a continuous stream of doctors and nurses in total personal protective equipment ran MRI images, brain ultrasounds, X-rays and various images on her.  ,
A week later, specialists ruled out heart and lung problems, and referred her to a physician. She was diagnosed with postpartum depression.
HER POSTPARTUM SPIRAL
Yap was conscious of maternal depression”. But I didn’t anticipate that it would occur to me. Or even if it did, I didn’t understand how awful it would be,” she said.
She recalled how after a labor that lasted for 20 hours, she was thrilled to give birth to her son.
” The moment he came up, I burst into tears. I don’t stop sobbing for a very long time. They put him on me for the first time for skin-to-skin. I was really, really happy,” she said.