The second night after bringing her newborn home, singer-songwriter Ethel Yap felt an unbearable tightness in her chest. She couldn’t breathe properly and felt herself gasping for air. Suspecting a postpartum heart condition, she and her husband Ronald decided to go to the hospital.
Because of her symptoms, Ethel was warded. After several tests on her heart and lungs, however, doctors found nothing out of the ordinary. They referred her to the mental wellness team, where her fear was confirmed: Ethel was experiencing postpartum anxiety.
It was a blow to the 36-year-old, who thought that she had been managing the mental health issues she had faced in her younger days very well. “My husband and I were both aware of my history with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, so when we found out I was pregnant, we started praying very frequently,” Ethel explains.
“We even set aside time to talk about the families and people we grew up with, and had deep conversations about letting go of emotional baggage. That was how much we prepared, and so I was pretty much caught off guard.”
The relapse put Ethel on a journey of discovery about the mental health struggles of new mothers, herself—and her faith in God.
“Will It Ever End?”
As Ethel grappled with the guilt that she and Ronald had perhaps not done enough, she found herself sinking into a spiral of insomnia and postpartum depression. While many mothers may experience “baby blues” right after childbirth, some get hit by this longer-lasting form of depression which can last many months and affect a mother’s ability to care for her newborn.
During this time, Ethel found herself “not recognising the person I saw when I looked in the mirror”. Even though she was receiving help from healthcare professionals and had support from a loving family and church community, there were many dark moments when she wondered if she’d ever come out of depression.
She eventually did—after 18 months—and the experience gave her new insights into the challenges faced by mothers who struggle with this condition for a much longer time. So, when she returned to her passion of songwriting in 2023, Ethel decided to write “Pills”, a song that intimately captures the moments of hopelessness she had experienced during postpartum depression.
“I hope this song will tell mothers who are also suffering from postpartum depression that ‘you’re not alone’.”
This song expresses the guilt of relying on medication as well as the conflicting emotions of new motherhood—a tenderness towards one’s child mixed with the desire to be somewhere else. In the song, Ethel intentionally left out a “happy ending”, because “when you’re in depression, you really don’t know if or when it will end”. She adds: “I hope this song will tell mothers who are also suffering from postpartum depression that ‘you’re not alone’.”
Discovering God’s Goodness
The period of postpartum mental health challenges was also a time when Ethel’s faith in God’s truth was tested—and renewed. Bombarded by thoughts of self-harm, she had no choice but to re-examine her personal beliefs about God.
Born into a Christian family and raised in a multi-generational family of church elders and pastors, Ethel had grown up constantly hearing stories of Jesus and God’s love for her.
“I had all the basic foundational teachings of who God is, His character, and His heart, but I realised that this was the moment where all those teachings had to apply,” Ethel says. “I really had to re-evaluate—did those things hold true for me or not? If I chose to believe that they were true, then it was also true that God is love, I am His, and He’s my good Father.”
As this truth took root in her heart, Ethel began to experience the goodness of God at a deeper level.
Since her younger days, one of her favourite Bible verses had always been 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It was a verse she liked to share with others to encourage them—“but when I went through depression, I had to ask myself every day: Do I really believe God’s grace is sufficient for me?” Ethel admits.
Yet, as she reflected on her circumstances, she found that she couldn’t deny God’s grace working in her life.
“I had all the basic foundational teachings of who God is, His character, and His heart, but I realised that this was the moment where all those teachings had to apply.”
“It was no longer a case where I was boasting about my own strength and more, because truly, I had come to the end of myself,” Ethel says. “And if I had come to the end of myself, but found that I was still alive, that I could still take care of my son, and that I was still present in the life of my husband, my child, and my family, then that must be only because of God’s grace.”
“God never told me why I had to suffer postpartum depression,” Ethel concludes, “but He did invite me to taste and see that He is good.”
This is the experience that Ethel hopes to share, to encourage mums with postpartum depression, as well as others who are struggling with mental health challenges.
Keeping the Faith
What helped her through the entire period of childbirth and depression, says Ethel, was her faith in God. At one particularly difficult point, when she was feeling stressed about breastfeeding, she came across Psalm 145:14–16:
The LORD upholds all who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
When she read it, Ethel felt the Holy Spirit ministering directly to her in her situation. “I was struggling with breastfeeding my baby,” she recalls. “And the words, ‘you give them their food at the proper time’, felt like God was speaking to me.”
At that moment, she says, God seemed to be reassuring her: Don’t worry, I’m feeding your child and making sure he’s fed. Struggling doesn’t mean that you’re not doing a good job or that you’re a poor mother.
These little reminders from the Bible saw her through some of the most helpless moments in her journey as a new mother.
Finding time to read God’s Word regularly, however, was not easy. “For at least the first six months, it was very, very hard to have time and energy to read my Bible at all,” she says. “One thing that was really helpful was listening to Christian podcasts. I listened to them while feeding my baby, and while doing the house chores, doing the laundry, and washing my pumps.”
“Thank God,” she adds with a chuckle, “for the invention of wireless earbuds!”
Get Help When You Need It
One of the lessons that Ethel has learnt from her experience, and which she wants people to know, is this: reaching out for help is a sign of courage, not weakness.
“Even though I was struggling, I knew I was never alone,” she says. “Even if people couldn’t really fully understand or empathise, they always reminded me that I was not alone.”
For her, receiving help from healthcare professionals had helped her greatly in her recovery. Besides being treated by a psychiatrist and the mental wellness team at the hospital, she also sought counselling from a private therapist.
“Mine was a very nonlinear journey towards recovery,” she recalls. “There were moments when I felt that I was doing better. My sleep was getting better. But something would happen that would trigger the anxiety, and that triggered insomnia which then led to depression . . . and the entire cycle would start again.”
Community support was also vital in her recovery process. “I’ve always been well supported by my husband, my parents, my sisters, and also the church community,” she says. “It was a community that rallied around me, that wanted me to still be around and be in their lives. That gave me some hope, as it was something for me to cling to as well.”
Having gone through what she did, Ethel now hopes to encourage more conversation about postpartum mental health challenges, especially in the church context, so that parents who are struggling will not feel the need to hide and can have a space to openly talk, grieve, and receive support.
“Even though I was struggling, I knew I was never alone,” she says. “Even if people couldn’t really fully understand or empathise, they always reminded me that I was not alone.”
