First of all, I can’t begin to keep up with all of the comments, emails, messages, calls and everything else that has come our way since Abigail was born. I wish I could – I’m awful at such things to begin with, and some folks, near and dear, stranger alike, have shared some amazingly kind, personal, poignant things with me/us. I don’t want this to serve as a response to all of those things, but for now, please know that there isn’t a single person who has reached out to us who hasn’t made us feel even more loved and supported than we could have ever dreamed.
Thank you so, so much.
I have had an awful 48 hours. Let me just put that out there now. It has been miserable. Remember the part where I don’t cry? Yeah, pregnancy hormones combined with some awful, misguided advice derailed that for me. My entire body is racked with pain from not only the surgery site itself, but also the adorable accoutrement that comes with a c-section, including constipation, swollen everything, bleeding and such. I’m huge and lumpy in a manner that, while blah blah blah worthwhile, leaves me a little aghast and sad. My legs and feet have fused into one long trunk, and if I have kneecaps still, you really wouldn’t know it to see me.
This is all a temporary condition, of course, but then there is the pain coming from my breasts from days of breastfeeding, and then not, which led to a series of events that I’ll cover soon in a different post, because if I continue to dwell on it I will never recover enough to do what needs to be done for Abigail.
For what seemed like forever last night, I sat on our couch, cold wash clothes held up against my breasts, and just wailed alongside my daughter, who wailed equally as hard in her father’s arms, as he attempted to calm us both.
Lastly, and I hope this doesn’t become my entire identity from here on out, as I have caught myself mentioning it a lot, but it has been unmercifully hard to get my brain around the 30 hours I spent in unmedicated labor before needing to get an epidural, pitocin administrated and then eventually a cesarean. No, I don’t feel like a failure, and I have no regrets. But it was long and painful and arduous, and in the end, I’m still reeling from that experience in a way I’m not ready just yet to articulate. And it’s not the part where I ended up having a c-section. It’s the part where pain never seemed to end.
Suffice it to say, my body has been through a lot, and for as much as I’d like to just end the store there and say, “In the end all of that matters is that Abigail is here and she’s safe and sound,” it is not all that matters in the end for us. It is, obviously, the most important thing to us, but it is not the sum total of the past week.
I have more to say.
But for now? Oh despite last night and some of the goings on, we are so joyous and happy. We are so proud and in love with this little person. I spend my mornings and parts of my day with her on my chest and my world collapses inside of itself from the emotion of it all. I can’t believe this is my daughter. How lucky did we get?
(If you’d like to read Scott’s account of the labor and his perspective stop on over to his blog and read his latest post.)
