My last post, on January 23rd, 2017 I titled, “A Glimpse of Eden.”
When I wrote it I had the feeling that I was “asking for it” so to
speak. I was publicly acknowledging the wonderful place I was in—loving
God and loving the life He’d given me. This feeling turned out to be
prophetic, because just a few months later, after getting a positive
pregnancy test, I began the most difficult year of my life to date.
Now,
before I say anything about what made it so difficult, I want to say
that I was thrilled that God was giving us another baby. I had prayed
for this for months and prepared for it for years (I’ll explain this
shortly). I REALLY wanted a baby, and after it had taken us almost 2
years before conceiving our first, I wasn’t sure whether God would bless
us with another. So I was and am super thankful for the new life that
God had given me. For me, however, the joy over the gift of a new life
was completely separate from the grief I felt over the process of
pregnancy and what it does to my body and my life.
The first half
of my pregnancy with Finn had been super difficult due to constant
nausea. Thankfully the nausea medicine had been able to keep the
vomiting under control so that I never was bad enough to be hospitalized
like women with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, but the experience was
nevertheless super difficult for me, and so after that pregnancy I
devoted hours and hours, days really, to finding preventative measures
that would help my next pregnancy go more smoothly. I used topical
magnesium and took prenatal vitamins, milk thistle, and vitamin B
supplements regularly for over a year before getting pregnant. I was
much more fit and healthy going into this second pregnancy. I spent
hundreds of dollars on all natural anti-nausea regimens which I had on
hand for the onset of my next pregnancy.
I won’t say that none
of these things helped, but it’s actually quite likely that they did. I
have teammates in Cusco whose pregnancies have been worse than mine was
and whose nausea lasted much longer than mine did. For me, however,
this second pregnancy was just as difficult for the first half, and much
more so in the second half than what I experienced in my first
pregnancy.
My mother will tell you that I am a big baby when it
comes to nausea. I always have been. It’s just incredibly
debilitating to me and I don’t handle it well at all. I cried almost
every day for months—crying out to God begging for strength and
endurance, thanking Him for the baby and begging Him to take my
suffering. I often struggled for energy and oxygen (these things were
surely intensified by my 11,000 ft. elevation.) By the time the nausea
started to abate, I began dealing with much more intense exhaustion,
feeling out of breath after walking very short distances. I also
started to feel a lot of soreness in my belly—I believe due to diastasis
recti (google it). This soreness got worse and worse throughout the
remainder of the pregnancy making standing and walking quite painful. I
got through each day promising myself that this would be the last
pregnancy I’d ever have to endure and that after it was over, I’d work
super hard to get my body back in shape so that I could feel good enough
to LIVE again.
Skye was born on January 3rd, the
evening before her due date, and while the labor was super hard, we both
came out of it healthy, and for that I am so thankful. I was elated to
finally be done with pregnancy and move toward taking back my life with
vigor. But God had some things to teach me yet, that would be learned
through some additional physical suffering.
Recovery
initially went much better and quicker this time around because I had
managed not to tear hardly at all. During my two days at the hospital,
however, I remember noticing that my PUPP rash was beginning to spread.
This extremely itchy rash which sometimes appears at the end of
pregnancy had appeared on my lower belly about a week before delivery.
By about 4 days post delivery it was all over my body. This rash
quickly became all consuming and much more worrisome and difficult than
anything else I was dealing with including the intense pain of
breastfeeding and extreme engorgement. I finally called my OB’s
office’s emergency line after hours one evening and begged through tears
for them to help me.
Over the next several weeks I went
through multiple rounds of oral and topical steroids, antihistamines,
herbal supplements, and wives tale remedies. One round of steroids made
it considerably better, but then it returned with a vengeance landing
me at the dermatologists office at 2 weeks postpartum. Even now that
the rash has finally mostly dissipated 2 months out, I continue to deal
with some latent itchiness, probably due to dryness induced by all of
the tons of steroids.
For so long during my pregnancy I had
counted on things getting better post-delivery. I knew that
breastfeeding and adjusting to a new baby would be challenging, but I
had prepared myself for that. This rash was a wildcard which I had not
counted on and that was very difficult to accept after such a long haul
of physical suffering during pregnancy.
In the midst
of all of this, God presented me with another thorn in the form of
diastasis recto. From pretty early postpartum I started taking walks in
an effort to get strong and in better shape. For so long I had looked
forward to being able to get active again and I wanted to do everything
in my ability to get back in shape. I also began doing rehabilitation
exercises that I found online to help heal my diastasis. It soon became
apparent, however, that this separation of my ab muscles was pretty
severe, and until I was able to regain functionality in my core, I would
need to greatly limit the types of exercises I did so as not to
exacerbate it. Running was out.
The other day I was doing
these rehab exercises and feeling quite defeated because the simplest
exercises were SO difficult for me to do. After weeks of attempting
these exercises I was still struggling to do them correctly and feeling
like I was getting nowhere. I began to despair. For so long I had
waited to be able to work hard and get my body back and here I was
unable to do the simplest, lamest of exercises. I had assumed that if I
worked hard enough and was diligent enough I would be able to make
progress and get strong and healthy again. I had accepted a year of
weakness and inability to control my physical state, but this was
supposed to be my time now. I worked super hard taking as rigorous,
intense walks as I could in the mornings and doing these exercises
multiple times a day but finally I had to accept that I was still not in
control of my body. God was. While I was on one of these rigorous
walks in the morning God reminded me that for the entire pregnancy I had
accepted my circumstances for the moment but clung tightly to the
notion that I would take back the control after the pregnancy was over.
I was and had been clinging tightly to an idol of control over my
body.
So I’m learning to accept that I have no control over my
body. I am called to steward the body God has given me, and so I will
continue to do the exercises I can and take my rigorous walks when I
can, but if God wills that I remain physically weak, I must accept it.
If God wills that I remain itchy I must accept it. This acceptance has
been a blessed thing. It’s so freeing, really, to realize that it’s
not up to me to work my butt off until I’m fully functional again. If I
do that now I’ll make things worse, so I’ll continue to slowly fumble
my way through the lame-o exercises that may or may not gradually close
the gap in my ab muscles.
I’m INCREDIBLY thankful to have a
wonderful baby girl, to be no longer pregnant, and to be way less itchy
at this point. It feels glorious to be able to take walks in the
morning without pain in my abdomen, hips, and back. I’m really enjoying
worshiping during these walks. In contrast to the past year, my life
feels so bright and beautiful again. I’m so thankful for the new energy
and health and acceptance that God has granted me for the time being.
The freedom to move and walk and do even mundane things from day to day
without pain or nausea is AMAZING, and I am determined to enjoy it and
live fully for as long as God chooses to bestow these blessings on me. I
am also determined to fight the idol of control over my
circumstances—though I know this will likely be a battle that waxes and
wanes for the rest of my life.
