Life after the Storm

Oh, 2018, let's recap. To say that this was a hard year is an understatement. Once I left my postpartum storm behind, I thought I was in the home stretch of the usual childhood scrapes and bruises. I spent a lot of time at the hospital for both kiddos. What a whirl it has been since the beginning of the year! From asthma attacks, staph infections, croupy coughs, flus A and B strains to a rare blood disorder that my daughter was diagnosed with. I feel even more exhausted just thinking about what a year its been! So onto this "new"ish blog. Because I do miss blogging! Life after these past series of storms begin like this: standing in the center of chaos and wondering, "where exactly do I go from here?" I use to think that I needed to go all in; tackle as many tasks to clear the mess faster/repair the damage faster. But with my fickle heart, I would find something in the thick of cleaning up, a memento or a destroyed shard of something that would give me p...

I was originally going to start this blog at the beginning of the year. I had an outline, planned out dates, and jotted down inscriptions with little voice of motherhood wisdom and our faith sprinkled throughout.... Instead, I can't sleep because our daughter is sick and found myself needing to speak out into the void instead of googling symptoms and trying not to break down and cry! This blog is about finding hope in the midst of darkness. I thought our journey of hospital stays would end when our premature babies left the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Instead, I confided in a friend that our local childrens' hospital has become a second home. It's not as daunting and scary anymore. It's become an overwhelming epiphany of "same old, same old." I am navigating the world as a parent to a child with an autoimmune disorder. My daughter has autoimmune hemolytic anemia . You can read about it here . I'm used to having labels and badges han...

👉 ”Postpartum Forest,” from my memoir Storm of Hope: God,  # Preeclampsia ,  # Depression  and me. ”  👈 Sometimes my anxiety manifests in thoughts of things that may happen.  “I can’t go to a play date 10 mins away because I have to cross that freeway that always has wrecks. I’ve been lucky before but what if today is the day?” Or “I have to sit in line for 1 hour waiting for my kid, because if I don’t, she’ll think that I’ve abandoned her. What kind of mother abandons her kid?” These thoughts make my day impossible and I get overly anxious when a plan deviates. I live and breathe routine because if I don’t, I feel off kilter and perhaps, the world will work that way too. . . When I was younger I thought I wanted to travel the world and be the type of spontaneous person who just ... lives. I didn’t imagine I’d be creating for myself habitual patterns, one where spontaneity is both foreign and a thing that’ll incite a panic.   . ...

When I was a kid, my parents would always take us on summer road trips across the country. More so by my mom's work schedule then by design, we would end up celebrating my birthday out at some fancy vacation spot. By the time I hit college, I "implemented" a celebratory week. Since I share a birthday in July with my mom (7/8), my niece So (7/11) and Sasha (7/15), and my father in law (7/22), it became a month long party! This is trivial in the scheme of things - most especially after this weekend. Naturally and selfishly, I've always loved celebrating my day. As I started my parenting journey, my identity is tied to being Ellie and Ro's mama. My birthday, at least, I get to remember all the lovely goodies and memories of who I was before and who I am now, and who I get to celebrate with in the future. My day. My cake. Presents just for me. Today is the Monday after my birthday (7/21) and I had hoped to reflect on my 35th year, all the ups and downs, ...

I miss blogging. I started blogging in 2008, to help me cope with stress as I prepared to get married and graduate with my undergraduate (within a week of the other). It also allowed my relatives in the Philippines to get a glimpse of life here in the States. Blogging helped me tremendously during my anxieties, my depression and within the ten years, all these questions of God, and where I stood in the midst of my fears and faith. I've learned so much about myself while I blogged, and even though I've mostly deleted its contents, I've kept the ones within the past 6 years - the ones I've deemed "important," mostly because it's the current season I'm in: Motherhood. I'm in the early childhood years of it, and I know as time goes on, it'll change to preteens, teen years....reflecting and gauging the seasons that my children are in.  I love being a mom. Though there are parts that I wish never to repeat again, and parts that I often wo...

On May 19th, I gave this speech to fellow survivors, walkers, mamas, and papas, at the Preeclampsia Promise Walk in Dallas.  My speech: I’m Leila Tualla, a believer, a wife, mama to two feisty kiddos. I’m an anxious writer and a terrible speaker. I was in the fun phase of my second trimester where maternity photo shoots would be scheduled, hospital tours were coming up, and so were the endless supply of baby shower treats. My first child would be born in a sea of pink and polka dots. I was in bliss. And then I one day, I wasn’t. In January 2012, about 26 weeks in, I was diagnosed w Preeclampsia. At 31 weeks, I entered motherhood w a baby that needed to be life lighted to a hospital that had a NICU an hour and a half away. It would be her home for six weeks. Those weeks blurred into each other, and I only remember the highs and lows. There were plenty of highs, including her first bath, our first kangaroo care, meeting the grandparents….. I r...

Mother's Day 2016 I was told on Mother's Day two years ago, that the NICU was gearing up to discharge us. I spent a majority of that day doing Infant CPR and infant care and then doing a car seat challenge. There was no "celebration of mom" at our house, but a celebration of the IDEA that my family would be whole soon. On Feliz dia de las Madres (Mexican Mother's Day), I was holding onto my little man's hand on our way home. I didn't have breakfast in bed or have a slice of cake. I didn't have any time carved out for "me-time."  What I did have were little toes and fingers to kiss lovingly....for however long I wish. I didn't have wires I had to worry about or had to explain to my five year old why and what the alarms that sounded meant. What I did have was a big helper who knew where the diapers and wipes were kept; who kept kissing on baby brother and who wanted so badly for him to "get bigger so we can play barbies....

I've been doing a creatives workshop for the past few weeks. We're actually on week 7 now. This workshop is specifically for mothers and the experience has been interesting, to say the least. I'm learning about myself as a mother, my identity, how to carve time for both my writings and for my kids and my sanity.....I've been to a few creative groups and almost all the ones I've been to, there isn't a young writer mama in the mix. Or at least a mama with littles. These groups usually have older, retired creatives who towards the later seasons of their lives, picking up their dream/hobby/passion. They don't have to worry about feeding toddlers and doing homework with kindergarteners. The pressure of keeping house tidy and getting everyone bathed and tucked in, are gone. My season of writing has coincided with the early years of motherhood. While I wrote Love, Defined in 2003/04, it wasn't until 2015 that it was published.....when my daughter was 3. As I...

Hey there!  Thanks for stopping by! WHY I WRITE: Pregnancy is supposed to be this beautiful and wondrous thing. If you're like me, you have had the perfect "textbook" pregnancy up until the words, "you have Preeclampsia," were uttered. Suddenly, you're not so sure what's going on with your body, with your pregnancy, and to some extent, with your life.  I've been there.  I've researched more than I care to admit about Preeclampsia, "life after preeclampsia," subsequent pregnancies, etc.  I thought I was done with babies when I still have to pick up broken pieces of my heart and this idealization of what motherhood is supposed to look like when my girl was born.  I endured. I AM enduring. There's really nothing you can do except putting one foot in front of the other and hoping for the best. My journey with Preeclampsia began in 2012. Our story begins here: Do two positives make a baby? My First prenatal appo...

Starting from Scratch (again) I miss blogging. It's been almost 2 months since I left this site. 2 months and I've decided I don't like the look of my author website....and how as much as I wanted to integrate the two. I just can't. This space is under construction. In the future, I will post only on Mondays and all about Motherhood. My motherhood monday series will begin in TWO WEEKS(eek!!) starting on April 1st. I will also post my author news here once a month...which will also be on my website. Third time's the charm, right?!

The thing about trauma is that the further removed you are in time from it, the less painful it becomes. Yes, there may be some triggers that will bring you to your knees or force you to hide and breathe in the tears that threaten. But for the most part, years of separation from those events lessen the emotional weight you carry. *Though, I realize this may not be true for all traumas. ...what happens when it's associated with your children? You can't shove the feelings. You can't hide from the tears. You can only hold onto the moments of pain and in one breath, try as hard as you can to let it go. Every year, I remember the smells and sounds of the NICU. I remember their little incubators and only being allowed to touch and not hold my babies in my arms. Every year, I have tears for all that what-ifs. And every day of that year, I hug my children as tightly as I can. The memories are us. We are who we are today because of them.  Our beginnings start at the pa...

If you follow me on my author page - www.leilatualla.com or on my social media, you would know that yesterday, I did my very first poetry reading along with different writers at an event in my hometown called, "Get Lit at the Main Pecan." I read through my piece a few days before and choose the two poems that I wanted to read. I was ready but nerves would surface the closer I got to Saturday. When it was my turn to speak, I COULD NOT get through the entire reading without breaking down. In hindsight, I should have read my words out loud. I sat down and calmed my beating heart and closed my mind off of the negative thoughts. I was convinced that there is no way I was going to do this again. And then in that room of almost thirty people, I had three different mamas walk up to me and share their stories. 3 women, 4 including myself, talked about our own preeclampsia journeys and the mental and emotional damage it did to us. This journey - my book - was a way for me to ...

UPDATE 7/2017: I wrote a poetry collection/memoir about my experiences living with Preeclampsia during my second pregnancy in 2015. I was dealing with pregnancy anxiety that stemmed from my first pregnancy and having NICU memories with my daughter. I ended up with postpartum depression and wrote as much truths as I could. I hope that you'll come to find my words wherever you are in your season and find hope and faith in your beautiful mess. 

So I've been thinking about where I want this blog to go. I have thought about deleting - but I can never make myself get to that point. I've thought about merging it with my author site since I write about Preeclampsia and what it did to me, how it changed me. I'm realizing that I am more than my diagnosis, I am more than what is in my medical file. I'm also a walking story and advocate. While I think that no one pays attention, I will get random messages about what it means to be a survivor and how to process the grief that came when baby is in the NICU and mama is home. I think there are more stories that need to be told, not just mine.....and I hope in the future, I get enough stories to fill this entire blog of mamas and their precious babies. The truths about motherhood aren't pretty, this we all know. Each mama has their own story that need to be told. It doesn't matter how ordinary it seems, I think recently we've all believed in wanting to li...