Toddler-Vision and Woman-ing Up

 

This is what happens

when you leave a camera within a toddler's reach...

 

I particularly love the "Duhd- duys" (good guys).  There were about 5 pix of these guys. 

I wonder what he was thinking.

 

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Folks have been asking how we are doing.  My rote answer is "the baby is great", partly because I imagine that if I say anything else, judgments would fall swift and hard.  The real answer is that I feel like Indiana Jones, machete in hand, whacking my way through the twisted vines of the jungle. 

 

 The darling that lays intermittently squalling in my left arm is sensitive to dairy, so I have axed that from my diet.  I may need to give the old heave-ho to gluten as well, time will tell.  She is also super sweet when she is not fussing and has gained a pound. 

 

I am slowly recovering.  I don't use the wheelchair anymore.   I shuffle. 

My innards feel like a lava lamp; blobs of me shifting around in there.

I am weak and unsteady on my feet.  I am rather trembly. 

No, that's not a real word, but it works.

 

The postpartum battle simmers on in the day, and boils over in quiet hours.  I'll never quite understand how, through the ages, the survival of the species was left to tearful, barely rational beings with sore bodies and milk supply issues. I have only NOT fought it with one out of my 6 babes.    I think if I had been able to speak freely about it 6 babies ago, I would have had a much easier time with it. 

 

For me, "it" is waking up each day feeling like someone died, only you don't know who.  It also includes frequent trips on one or more hamster wheels in my head; thoughts that run round and round, always drawing to the same irrational conclusions, accompanied by feelings of failure and guilt.  There is mental fog, like someone hit the mute button on my feelings.

 

My sweet husband takes this ride with me each time.  He has gotten skilled at knowing how to help me through the jungle.  We count the blessings over and over, and he helps me get off of the hamster wheels by seeing the flaws in my thinking.  Sometimes the only thing that helps is being held.

 

I imagine some folks will think this is something I should be able to control, especially after all of the blessings we have been given in the past several months.  It just doesn't work that way.  I wish it did.

 

A lot of people have said I have been brave through
the trials we have experienced. 

For me, that was the easier part.
 Now is the time when I really have to Woman Up.