A Year of Weakness

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.