My WHY: How After 2 Pink Lines Was Born

Hi, I’m Bai, and I wanted to tell you all about my journey to where I am today, and how After 2 Pink Lines came to be.

I graduated from University in 2015 when I received my Bachelor of Nursing degree. I immediately started working at my hometown hospital and have been there ever since. I also married my husband in 2018, and we have 3 sons, born in 2019, 2022, and 2025.

Ever since I was in nursing school, there has always been a special place in my heart for all things "Mat/Child". The moment I walked onto that postpartum unit, I knew that in my career, I wanted to work with mothers and babies.

Over the last 10 years, I have continued to grow in my nursing career. I started out as a scared new grad, and now, I specialize in Labor & Delivery, and Postpartum care. The only real missing piece to my puzzle? All things Prenatal. The lack of knowledge that my patients had when coming into the hospital made me feel like our system was failing them. Was it their choice not to receive prenatal education? Or was it simply just not available?

In my short 8-12 hour shift with them as their L&D nurse, there was no way that I could teach them everything that I felt would make them feel the most confident in taking care of their baby. In fact, I felt like I was overwhelming them with all the teaching I was doing. On top of that, I would only have a short amount of time each shift to even teach them because of my other patients.

So many new parents struggle with that initial postpartum phase because they are learning SOOO many new things; things that would have been more beneficial if they learned it during pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I didn’t feel that I needed to take any prenatal education. I was a nurse who worked with new parent’s and babies every single day. Why would I need to learn what I already knew? And my husband? Pff.... I could just teach him. How hard could it be to change a diaper or rock a baby to sleep?......

I suffered with PPD and baby blues in my first 3 months postpartum because I felt like I was failing my child. Googling every possible thing at all hours of the night. Crying in the shower because WHY WON’T HE SLEEP. Not saying a word to anybody because I AM A NURSE. I know what I’m doing. I don’t need help. Right?

If I could tell that scared new mom what I know today, I would tell her that she was wrong. She wasn’t failing her baby. She was learning something new. Something she’d never done before. All while having a huge surge of uncontrollable hormones, lacking sleep, and learning to love her new body all over again.

If I was to hand you a 1000 piece puzzle, and say “you need to complete this puzzle. No mistakes. It needs to be perfect. And it needs to be done today”, you would look at me like I was crazy. That’s impossible. How could I master this puzzle all in one day?

Same goes for caring for a new baby, and yourself; a new mother. It’s a learning curve; all new territory.

So what can I do, to help all the new moms that were just like me? How can I take everything that I want to teach them in that short 8-12 hours and make it accessible for them during their whole pregnancy? How can I make that postpartum period just a LITTLE bit easier on their mental health?

And so, After 2 Pink Lines was created. I’m hopeful that this can be a space for new moms to come. No more doom scrolling in the middle of the night looking for the “right” answer. I’m going to make this simple for you. There will never be “One Right Answer” to anything. Not in pregnancy, not in Labor or during delivery, and not in postpartum. But there are still some things that you can do to make the hard times just a little bit easier.

- B