Love

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

-George Matheson

So Long Ago

Four months later, my bed rest experience is starting to feel very surreal. Did I really spend five months in bed all day? Even though the physical and psychological effects of bed rest are still with me, the experience itself is fading. Especially with the frenetic pace of life at the moment, days spent entirely in bed seem...I don't know....laughable?

I remember days when I read books cover-to-cover within a few hours. I remember my love/hate relationship with my bed rest "headquarters," which simultaneously felt like a prison and a safe haven. But it all feels like some other life, something that happened to a different person.

David Update

David went for his MRI last week. The results confirmed the initial diagnosis, lipomeningocele with a tethered cord. That's good, overall. He will need surgery, but this is a very mild defect and fairly easy to correct. The surgery will be in June, and he'll be in the hospital for a couple of days.

The MRI experience went very smoothly. Miraculously smoothly, in fact. David usually wakes up several times to eat in the early morning, so I was expecting to have a very unhappy baby when he woke up for his morning snack. And....he didn't wake up. I fed him for the last time around 3:30am, and he slept up until we put him in his car seat to go to the hospital. Then he fell back asleep until time for his MRI! He normally would have wanted to eat around 5:30 and 7:30, so I absolutely view that as divine intervention -- no kidding.

Then, once David was being prepped for surgery, he woke up and started smiling at all the nurses. Occasionally he would look in my direction and pout, but in general he was his normal, smiley, cuddly self.

The Vanderbilt team was very kind, and they ensured that everything went smoothly. I am grateful to be in a city with such a wonderful hospital.

Mostly I am grateful to God for the blessings we continue to encounter on every part of this journey.

Two

Look at this dude! He is so cool. He just turned two, and I am so thankful that he is my son.

In the past couple of weeks he has become quite the chatterbox, developing long sentences and practicing big words like hippopotamus and Kostitsyn. He's transitioned from his crib to his big boy toddler bed. His favorite word is no. I definitely have a two-year old.

Bouncing Back from Bed Rest....or Not

So my plan to bounce back from bed rest has become more like wandering aimlessly in a direction generally away from bed rest.

I'm still attending hula hoop classes, which are mostly fun but occasionally discouraging when my muscles just won't cooperate. We joined the Y last week, so I attended half a zumba class last Saturday. Yes, I only managed to wheeze my way through 30 minutes before deciding I better stop before I passed out. I called my friend Ariana in frustration and proclaimed that I am going to have to attend the "old people zumba class". Yes, it exists, and yes, I'm really thinking I would benefit from attending. I had imagined doing some high intensity exercise 2 or 3 times a week and watching the baby weight melt away, but I think I need to revise my expectations.

I'm definitely struggling with my self-image. My body shape is very different than it has ever been. I've lost a lot of my baby/ bed rest weight from most of my body, but the pounds are clinging to my stomach. While I've definitely never had a washboard tummy, I'm used to being a curvy girl with a nicely defined waist. I guess I sorta still have a waist, but I'm quite thick around the middle right now. I feel totally shallow saying this, but it's hard to look in the mirror and see something so different. Not to mention trying to find clothes that fit....my normal pants are too small, but when I try on a bigger size my pants fall off. Perhaps I need to make this the year of the dress.

The emotional toll of bed rest is still a challenge as well. Having a newborn is tough -- often there are months of being a homebody, having little to no intimacy with one's spouse, being exhausted all the time, and experiencing social isolation. The saving grace is that after two or three (or four) months, things start to get better and life falls into a new normal. But with bed rest preceding the arrival of the newborn, I feel like I've been in that tired, isolated place for, oh, say, seven months. And that's hard. I miss my husband, and I miss hanging out with friends, and I miss......um.......my short term memory.

I don't regret doing the bed rest. It's totally worth it to have this amazing little baby. I know I am so lucky that my baby is one of the ones that made it. But gosh, you guys, this is hard.