The Daily Hailey

It was a pretty loaded day today. We hit the post office, went to the doctor, to the mall for several different stores, Superstore, chiropractor, another mall, and Costco. I was the geek with the typed list, but it was only sanity. Lucky for us, we accomplished everything, and won’t have to make the trip in again tomorrow!!! The only things we didn’t get from the list were things that weren’t at the stores for whatever reason. And luckily, none of them were exactly “do or die” so I’m still calling our day productive and enormous and successful 🙂

I wanted to let you guys in on our doctors appointment. It feels weird to share quite so much with you, since I don’t really know who all of “you” are! But hey, why stop now? Laela and I celebrated six weeks together on Monday, so we had our check up this afternoon. Dr. Guselle checked Laela out first and confirmed that she is quite perfect, just as I suspected. She has already dropped in her weight curve from the 85% to 75%. She’s not too choked about it, but the regular process is to watch her a bit closer, and if she drops another percentile, they’ll want to check her over more thoroughly. However, I know how I grew as a baby, and it was much slower than Dekker! So I don’t expect her to exactly “bulk up” right away here. I was a whopping 28-ish pounds when I started kindergarten, and Dekker is currently about 33 pounds. Point made.

It was my turn next, and she left the room so I could change into a lovely paper sheet. While she was gone, both children melted down, and Brady took them all to the car to get them entertained with toys, music, and a bottle. Brady loyally comes to each and every appointment, so this was probably my first one alone. But I have to say, it was quite perfect. I love my doctor, and she and I did great together. She loosened up quite a bit. Its fun to see someone so professional let her hair down the way she did. I don’t want to make people feel weird, but I can’t NOT include this story! She was squirting out that gross lube in preparation of my cervical exam, and the tube made a farting sound. I honestly barely even noticed but she burst out laughing and commented that it was the bottle, not her. I hear her say a bit quieter “I may be old, but I’m not that old!” I laughed out loud and said that just because she couldn’t hear it doesn’t mean I couldn’t. I have never seen her laugh like that 🙂 She could barely regain her composure, it was sooo funny! We eventually pulled ourselves together and got on with the appointment. I’m healed up pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty ok. My stitches look great, my ab muscles are already back together, and my tummy feels normal. My uterus is still a bit softer than it should be, so the fact that I still have occasional contractions is a good thing. I beg to differ, of course, but now at least I understand. Physically, I’m cleared. But after quite a bit of conversation, we agreed that I have what appears to be the beginnings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This makes me pretty sad, if I’m being honest, but it also doesn’t come as a big surprise. I am not where I would like to me, mentally and emotionally. I’m confident I don’t have Postpartum Depression, as I don’t fit that bill in the way of fearing for my kids lives, or laying awake without sleep, or having no appetite. I struggle with the delivery, mostly. It replays. It’s fairly consuming, and I don’t want it to be. For the moment, I declined medication. Its still very early, and while I’m not someone who is sworn against medication, I would rather start with counselling. The risk with this is that the meds would take 4-6 weeks to kick in, but I’m trusting God. I feel very strongly that I need to vent a bit to someone who doesn’t know me, or have any real loyalty to me. I’m hoping I will gain some tools and ideas on how to cope and move on from what happened. My doctor told me that its not uncommon for women in my shoes to struggle with PTSD, but it usually doesn’t show up until their next pregnancy when they start to worry that it could happen again. Mine is already very present so I’d rather figure things out now so I can be prepared if I feel these feelings again in a hypothetical third pregnancy. She has already told me that Laela’s delivery paired with PTSD gives me all the reason to ask for a scheduled induction in the future. Obviously, nothing is decided as of today, but that already relieves some stress. God is good.

I was thinking I would leave all the info as a separate post for another day, but it all came out today, so there you have it. Verbal diarrhea I suppose. Thanks for listening and loving. Today was successful and productive and great in a lot of ways, but it was big in a lot of ways. Too big. I’m pretty finished. Stick a fork in me. I’m done. But actually, don’t stick a fork in me. I can’t take a whole lot more today.

What I can take it some apricot brandy and sprite, My Name is Earl, and mini chocolate bars.

And therapeutic baby cuddles.

That smell alone is healing.