I've always been anemic, but I donated blood for the first time in my life.

I’ve always been anemic. That was just a fact of my existence. Mornings were tough. I had chronic fatigue since I was a pre-teen. Iron levels were low. Things like donating blood was never in my bucket list, because I’d spent most of my life just accepting that I’m anemic, low energy, and all around a medical catastrophe (if you know my health history, you know 😂).

But interestingly, becoming pregnant, having kids, and being forced to “confront” my body’s limitations and energy level have created opportunities to improve my QOL in ways I had never expected.

I have been managing chronic conditions and rare diseases since I was in middle school, beginning with a depression diagnosis. In the following two decades, I have been diagnosed with anything ranging from bipolar disorder, vascular tumors in my brain, and brain injury, to rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, and executive function disorder. I don’t even have a full count of the diagnoses I’ve walked around with in the past 37 years of my life.

So, mild to severe discomforts, pain, or inconveniences have just been a “norm” to me. The price of living life. This belief about my body began changing when I got pregnant. Suddenly, I realized that I was “building” and feeding this new life. To build this baby and give it my best shot, I needed to improve my health and quality of life, along with being more cognizant of what I put in my body. One of the recommended improvements was to increase my iron levels.

I’m anemic. That was just a fact all my life. But my OBGYN recommended a Iron + Vitamin C supplement that could help me, and I began taking it religiously (apparently your absorption of Iron improves when you pair it with Vitamin C). I never stopped taking it even after my second birth, and have been taking it daily for over four years now.

Few weeks back, I was able to donate blood for the first time in my life. They check your hemoglobin levels beforehand to make sure you’re not anemic, and I passed the test, and was able to donate 1 pint of whole blood! I was amazed.

Now, donating blood every 2 months is on my calendar, and something I hope to continue doing throughout my life. Having someone “relying on me” (I’m an “obliger” through and through…) also helps me prioritize nutrition and health so I am healthy enough to comfortably give blood.

I just signed up to donate platelets, which apparently take 2~3 hours. I’ll try it once and see if it’s something that’s feasible for me to do regularly as well.

I have been working on improving my sleep routine for the past month to get off my dependence on sleep aids (melatonin and Unisom) that I had developed over the past four years. I’m ecstatic to say that I have been able to sleep without them for a whole month now!

“Not being able to sleep” and “waking up multiple times a night” have always been “just a thing I go through.” But after experiencing losing 10lbs with a weight loss app over a few months, I felt more agency over my quality of life, and decided to give changing sleep routine a go.

Not only do I no longer have to take melatonin to fall asleep, for the past few nights, I haven’t woken up in the middle of the night either! (I honestly don’t know when the last time I didn’t consistently wake up in the night was.)

Becoming pregnant, giving birth, and raising a new born (twice!) have wrecked havoc on my body and my mental health. I’ve been slammed with so many things about being pregnant/postpartum/child rearing that I can’t control.

But now that I’m through the newborn phases (my younger baby is now 2!!), I feel like I am actually coming out on the other side healthier, more energetic, and with a higher general quality of life (including mental health).

It’s a circus every day with two extremely energetic toddlers, but having to deal with them day to day has made me realize how important keeping my health in check and energy levels high are, just to make it through the day. And for that, I have to prioritize my health, not treating myself as an afterthought.

I think the fact that my baseline “capacity” is fairly low due to my chronic illnesses made me realize this right before I completely burnt out from the stresses of daily life with toddlers, allowing me to ask for help and give up certain aspects to prioritize what I believe matters to me and my family.

One thing I now strongly believe is that not only is physical health important (sleep!), so is mental health. In order to be present for my kids in the way I want to be, I had to confront my social media/phone addiction (which is another story entirely that I’ll probably write about later). I definitely feel the difference on days my brain is “overworked” from too many videos/input/puzzle games/social media versus days I let it “rest” without the endless inputs (even audiobooks are inputs!).

I knew from the start that I can’t “have it all,” so had to pick and choose. But by releasing myself from having to “do it all” and be the pressure to be “perfect,” I feel like I’ve been freed from a lot of anxieties that have plagued me throughout my life, especially postpartum.

I am not religious, but the famous serenity prayer really rings true to me:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Though my body took quite a beating from having babies, these experiences made me really come to terms with what it means to “be present” for my kids, both in spirit and physically. I need energy and physical health, along with psychological health, to make it happen.

If I never had kids, though my day to day would definitely be less hectic, I wouldn’t have had the motivation to make the changes needed to make. I would have gone on accepting the status quo of “not optimal, but not devastating” quality of life.

Kind of like a phoenix. I had to really burn everything down in order to come back up from the ashes with new set of priorities… Strange how things turn out, even after the darkest of days

!