Thriving or Surviving

It’s been awhile! For the first two weeks we were in a fog of newborn life. Definitely in survival mode. We are still in survival mode but slowly getting some kind of normal. Zoey sleeps in 2-3.5 hour stretches at night, she is hard to settle at first but then she’s better and I get up to breastfeed usually twice a night, and then again first thing in the morning. Sometimes I can go back to sleep after that for another hour or so while Michael gets Logan ready for school.

We did our newborn photo shoot but haven’t gotten the pictures back yet. These are some that I took and wanted to share. 🙂

Logan is super excited about being a big brother. But there have definitely been some rocky moments and hard transitions. I know it will get easier as time goes by but it’s just one more added stressor right now.

Zoey had a mild tongue tie and we got it fixed, which was good but it was A BATTLE to get appointments. Thankfully we got that fixed around week 2, so breastfeeding got better after that. And thankfully I was able to heal from THAT!

As for me, I’ve had some difficulties. I had a few mild complications postpartum–nothing super major but enough to be a nuisance and I feel like I am literally at the doctors office or pharmacy EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And then around week 3 my old SI-hip injury flared up. I got a cortisone shot in the SI joint last year, before getting pregnant, and it gave me almost a year of pain free living. Even pregnant I didn’t have a ton of issues with my SI. Just other issues. LOL so many issues. But this time? This time it’s really really rough. The pain has increased every single day and by the end of the third week and starting 4 weeks postpartum I could barely walk. I am not exaggerating when I say that. Every step I take it causes excruciating pain in my SI joint and it’s spreading out to my right hip. My upper back is tightening up from walking weird. I can barely do stairs at all (which is hard because we have two flights of stairs in our house).

I did massage, chiropractor every few days, heat, ice, advil, tylenol….I don’t and can’t do pain pills. Not that that would really fix the issue. I finally got a prescription for a prednisone treatment and that seems to be starting to help. I am hoping that gets it under some kind of control until I can get another cortisone shot.

My chiropractor said that it’s very common for stuff like this to happen postpartum because your body hasn’t “gone back to normal” yet and you still have relaxin hormones messing with your joints. Perhaps this is just a “4th trimester” kind of issue, but what is most alarming and upsetting is that I can’t walk well. Like I limp around the house at best. I want to be able to take Zoey for nice long walks during our maternity leave and it’s so frustrating!

On top of that, the first two weeks were hard for me emotionally. I was starting to see signs of postpartum depression. With Logan I didn’t have that, just a few days of the “baby blues” and then it turned into really bad postpartum anxiety. This time it was getting very bad very quickly so I talked to my doctor and my therapist and had an emergency session that helped a lot and my doctor bumped up my medication and within a week or so I was MUCH better. I don’t think I will stay at this dosage for very long but maybe a month or two to get over this hump and for life to settle down a bit. I am glad I caught PPD early and didn’t wait like I did last time. I was able to get a handle on it pretty quickly.

So I would definitely say I am NOT thriving right now.

I wish I had more of a positive update. Life is pretty boring right now. It really does feel like all we do is go to doctor appointments. Check ups, evaluations, etc etc. So much. Every day! And when we don’t have appointments I try to take naps, I feel Zoey and we watch a lot of TV. Funny, when I was on maternity leave with Logan I binged watched a bunch of TV shows (Outlander, Blue Bloods and Gilmore Girls). This time, I had a short list of TV shows I’ve been wanting to watch but I just don’t have time. Ever. So I mainly just watch old seasons of House Hunters. LOL

Hopefully I will have more positive news soon!