Life Lately

It has been so long since I've blogged! I've started this post in my head about fifty times, but just haven't sat down and written it. 2013 has proven itself to be quite the life-changing year so far...

Claire is doing great! She is such a sweet baby and we love being parents. It doesn't seem possible, but she will be six weeks old on Wednesday! Claire loves to eat and has the chunky cheeks to prove it! She's starting to smile more and be more awake during the day. She's appears to be a good sleeper too. We go to bed pretty late, but Claire generally sleeps between her night feedings and is usually up a couple times at night (once around 3 or 4 and then again around 6 or 7). We are very blessed. 

Claire is the light of our lives. Were it not for her, 2013 would be a pretty awful year so far. I'm still recovering from my ankle injury. It's been 9 weeks since the break and 8 weeks since my surgery. The bone is healed up nicely and I've been able to weight-bear for two weeks now. I'm going to physical therapy twice a week. It's a very long, slow process, as I'm basically learning how to walk again. An injury like this is really strange because you spend six weeks learning how to live in the world without using one of your legs. By the time you get that down, you get the okay to use the leg again and then...you just can't. I did exercises before I could put weight on it to lessen the atrophy in my hip and knee and those definitely helped, but all of the joints and muscles in my foot and ankle are just gone. I'm doing an ever-growing list of exercises from physical therapy every day. At the end of my first week, my physical therapist asked me to walk with one crutch. This wasn't something I was expecting, as it wasn't a step in my recovery we'd talked about before then. Needless to say, it wasn't pretty! When I asked her how it seemed, she said, "horrible". While she was just being honest, my therapist and I seem to have different views on motivation. I had to fight back tears the rest of the session and for the rest of the day, which was Cam's birthday. I was so discouraged. I've struggled with the fear that I'll never walk normally again. Intellectually, I know that's doesn't make sense, but it just feels impossible. It's weird to take something you just know how to do most of your life and then try to consciously learn how to do it again. Almost every night since then, Cam's been helping me practice walking with one crutch. Last night, something clicked and it just worked! This morning I tried it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke and I could still do it! I am thrilled! I know it seems like a small accomplishment, but it's a huge one on this long journey. Doing this more will help me to put more and more weight on my bad leg, which will strengthen it further. Hopefully there will be other new breakthroughs shortly.

                     2 weeks ago, at my 6 week post-op appointment.

Today, at 8 weeks post-op. My surgeon's amazing to leave such a thin scar!

I HATE that I'm going to spend the majority of my maternity leave unable to walk on my own. It absolutely breaks my heart and I've cried about it so many times. Like all moms do, I looked forward to my maternity leave so much. I had to fight through some pretty awful treatment (see: discrimination) at my job about it for months beforehand. I mean, how dare I get pregnant in a year of testing accountability? Don't get me wrong: my leave is wonderful because I get to spend it being a mommy to my little Clairebear, but it's looked nothing like I expected. I'm praying I can at least have a week or two at the end where things are normal, but there's just no way to know. When I see how long this recovery is taking, I'm unsure I'll even be able to go back on my planned return date to work. My surgeon may have to extend it a couple of weeks if I'm still not walking normally. I think my recovery is a little slower than normal because I'm recovering from childbirth and breastfeeding. When my surgeon saw my x-rays at my last appointment, he said my bone looked washed out, which is normal when you're immobilized, but it's also compounded because breastfeeding takes nourishment from all over your body. 

To sum it all up, I never realized that when I turned 30 my body would completely fall apart! Cam and I talk all the time now about how having our second baby will seem like an absolutely breeze compared to what this has been like. I struggle all the time with wishing I could go back and never have left my house the day of my fall, but I know that's pointless. I just pray there are small lessons I can take from all of this. I know I've become more patient. I'll never take my mobility for granted again. I have a whole new respect for people who can't walk. I appreciate the simple things in a new way...I want nothing more than to put my baby on my hip, walk into the kitchen unassisted, and do the dishes. I just want a normal life again. 

I could never make it through this without Cam, Claire, and the rest of our family. Cam has been amazing through all of this - he never gives up. He's such a wonderful father and Claire is so taken with her Daddy. My mom has been here every weekday helping me. I am much more mobile than I used to be, but I still need help since I can't yet carry the baby around myself. My mother-in-law came and spent a week with us. It was something we were already planning before I broke my ankle, but we needed her in a whole new way once that happened. If I can be half the mother these two incredible women are, Claire will be just fine. Speaking of Claire, I've often wondered why God put me in this position right as I became a mother. It just seems like it's all too much! But I also realize that if this ankle injury had to happen, I very well could have fallen into a dark place if I didn't have the joy of becoming her mother at the same time. She has been the sweetest little motivation through everything! I've decided this summer will be my "do-over maternity leave" and Claire and I are going to spend it doing tons of fun things!! 

To add to all of the craziness, Cam is experiencing some health problems of his own. Last weekend we were supposed to go to Houston for the day for a funeral. I woke up at 4:30 with the baby and realized Cam was already awake. He was having terrible pains in his stomach. We thought it was just gas and indigestion, since we'd been out for a big dinner the night before to celebrate for his birthday (my first meal out in two months). I got busy getting ready and getting everything ready to leave the baby with my mom for the day, but every time I turned around, Cam was in horrible pain. By the time my mom showed up right before 7, Cam said we needed to go to the emergency room. Considering it took me five years of begging to get him to go to the doctor for a plain old checkup, something was definitely up. After a couple hours at the ER, they decided it was gastritis brought on by a steroid he'd recently been put on because of back pain. They did an ultrasound on his gallbladder and said it looked okay. We were quite a pair - him on IV pain meds and me on crutches. We even had to call my Dad to come pick us up since neither of us could drive - ugh! Cam spent the rest of the day in pretty severe pain in bed. He went to see his regular doctor a couple days later and it turns out he thinks it's the gallbladder after all. So now Cam's doing more tests to figure out what's going on. If he does have gallstones, he'll likely have surgery to remove his gallbladder. All of his symptoms point to the gallbladder being the culprit, so we're both gearing up for another surgery. We're just in shock that this is happening right now, of all times. We're just trying to take it a day at a time and not worry too much about what's coming. If Cam does need to have surgery, I pray it's when I can walk unassisted, but also when I'm still on leave so I can care for him. 

We're in the thick of it right now, but we know God will see us through. We're also so thankful for this little angel. She makes each day a good one.