I have not forgotten your comment, dear "ayarella," at the end of the last blog about how I am doing now. In fact, it has haunted me for months. It seems mommy-brain is getting the best of me these days (how handy to transition from fatigue-fog to mommy-brain as an excuse for anything), and even when I have two seconds to sit at my laptop, the tyranny of the urgent email is all my mind has room for.
I just reread my last post, now almost a year ago (oh dear), and found it encouraging to look back and remember. I had no idea what the coming months would bring. Let me just say that this year has been fraught with physical limitation and weakness (along with the immeasurable joy of the cutest and sweetest baby imaginable!), and I'm pleased to say my mostly-recovered adrenals and God's grace has seen me through so far.
I did in fact have enough energy for 18 hours of labor that started at 1:00 AM and a natural birth...at the hospital down the street...in the biggest snowstorm in Maryland history: the birthing center was too far away and, incidentally, closed. I had enough energy for the newborn night wakings which lasted a little too long since 2:00 AM somehow meant party time to our little stinker. But thankfully she started sleeping through the night at 7 weeks after we got her on a schedule. I had enough energy to endure four months plus of postpartum healing complications that I won't go into here.
At six months our little darling hit a growth spurt that had her waking up at night again, sometimes several times, for the next two months, and I somehow had the energy for that, though I blame getting strep throat in July on my being thus run down. But I was able to recover in less than 3 days without antibiotics, which I attribute to my many natural "remedies." After sleeping through the night for another month and a half, she hit teething/sickness/teething again, which become a weeks-long family sickness saga. I think I am finally over that virus, maybe. Perhaps my adrenals are reaching their limit.
Breastfeeding takes alot out of you, I'm realizing, though what an honor to pour your life into another so literally, and such a darling other at that. But I have had an over-abundance of milk all these months actually, and plan to keep nursing her until she is a year old.
In addition to often-interrupted nighttime sleep, every day I have gone right back to bed during our daughter's first nap. Most of the time I am able to sleep, and this is probably what has gotten me through. It's a little more challenging now that she's down to two naps and her first nap is two hours after waking in the morning, as opposed to an hour and 15 minutes (ie, it's harder to go right back to sleep). But I'm hoping that as she starts sleeping through the night again and thus I do, I won't need that morning nap. If I can go to bed early. Which I'm flagrantly violating at this moment. Uh, good-night!
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