I am in a funny place, routine- and homemaking-wise, right now. Three weeks ago, I birthed our third child. As anyone who has had this experience knows, I am doing a lot of nursing, sleeping, not sleeping, and healing. And with the healing comes bleeding, which brings me around to that weird place.
In order to make the bleeding stop as quickly as possible, I need to do as little as possible around the house. In some ways it is freeing. Spend as much time on the internet as I want? Sure! Go back to bed after breakfast? Yes, please! Watch another movie? Why not? Read another chapter of a giant novel? Absolutely!
It is also the antithesis of what I normally try to accomplish with my days. Usually, I try to put away what I take out when I'm finished. I watch the floor for piles of crumbs or spills to clean up. I monitor the laundry piles, and the dish piles, and the amount of food in the fridge.
Thanks to many hardworking women in my parish, we are receiving meals for the next few days. Thanks to my mother and mother-in-law, we had in-home care for a few weeks beforehand. And thanks to my tireless, child-loving brother, we have help now too. I don't have to do most of what I normally do. I can focus on mothering my baby.
My mantra right now is "almost anything can wait four weeks." I recently read this in Dr. Sears's The Baby Book. Actually, I'm waiting closer to six weeks. And if I do as I plan, that means I'll be "going back" next Sunday (the 11th of July). That's going to come up pretty quickly. Seems this is a good time to practice living in the Here and Now and actively enjoy the rest of this precious newborn/postpartum period.
PLEASE rest! I've wound up in the ER twice trying to bleed to death by doing too much too soon after a baby was born. It doesn't take much. You have full permission to make six hundred comments a day on my blog if it will keep you off your feet. (c;
ReplyDeleteYes, rest! love to you!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reminder, Matushka. Don't worry, I am resting. :) And leaving LOTS of comments on your blog, no doubt. Thanks for not minding——you always have interesting posts anyway. ;)
ReplyDeleteI don't have the childcare every day for my older ones that my doc would like me to have for six weeks, but we have it often.
Have to keep reminding myself (and others in the same situation, I hope) that my bleeding is not a period but an open wound trying to close! I think modern "hygiene" tempts us to forget this.
Oh, and I finally have a novel I can sink into and THAT will help keep me loafing around reading (and nursing, of course). I can't do anything while I read a novel or before it's finished. Don't have the willpower to put them down.
ReplyDeleteAnyone read any of the Aubrey/Maturin (Master and Commander) novels? I'm starting in with the first, and I love the narrator after only a few pages. :)
No, I haven't read any of those, but you may not want to get me started! I have the same will-power problem and the house could fall down around my ears while I read.
ReplyDeleteIt actually *is* helpful to think of it as a healing wound because your behaviour is modified accordingly. Nobody would get up and run around with a newly sewn-up foot! Just because this is a wound you can't see doesn't mean it's only a period.
(Oh, and I am addicted to comments so leave as many as you like. (c; )
I did the same as Mat. Anna with my second. Well, I didn't go to the ER, but maybe I should have. It was really bad. So this weekend might be it? :) I hope bringing three kids to church will go well.
ReplyDelete